I've Heard Angels
Live Among Us
Dana Tenille Weekes
But, if angels hang low-key, shy of the proverbial
radar, I kinda wanna know. Last Sunday, my pastor
said, Heaven and hell exist right here on Earth. No
one shifted in the pews. My fingers shuffled in my
crossbody and inked the program’s margins next to
another bake sale announcement. I mean if heaven
can be my corner store, that alleyway shortcut from
catcalls, a righteous bake sale, then maybe angels are
among us. Maybe we are them. We harbor wounds,
watch the blood let, watch the flesh heal. I’d call that
a miracle. Bleeding can mean life. Bleeding can
mean alive until you’re not. And to be alive is a
constant clink, clink in the proverbial plate we pass
but never take from. I am told. I once prayed on a
school night in second grade to have wings. Hum the
wind like birds because my uncle said, not all heroes
don capes. But that night, God spoke to me and said,
you got imagination. I got options: wonder or worry.
Now, I gallop in the glut of my mind, a mercenary.
A back-then second grader protesting for mercy.
Telling my mind stories about being beyond pigeons
waiting by a bench for a piece of anything—beyond
survival. Frogs can only jump forward, a woman
named Maria told me two months ago. Maybe, there
is something to be learned from the cold-blooded.
Dana Tenille Weekes
Dana Tenille Weekes navigates the worlds of law and policy in the swirl of Washington, DC. Some of her poems have been published in Apogee, Torch Literary Arts, A Gathering of the Tribes, and The Elevation Review, and will be in a forthcoming issue of Obsidian: Literature & Arts in the African Diaspora. She is a two-time Pushcart Prize nominee and a finalist in Rhino Poetry’s 2022 Founders’ Prize. Dana is the daughter of Bajan immigrants and is the first in her family to be born in the United States.