Angels of Flame

Anastasia K. Gates

The morrow reed meadow — damp, 
dewed, flora frigid
with fever before dawn,     then dawn
     blazes the bugle, 
estranged from the boy. Can you hear 
the flugel             on the worn 
dirt berm, dulcet 
by the embouchure        of bluebell
      where his body lay. 
Sleepless, a mother and father wend 
with their only son 
and weep,
              his hand unclasped 
like a bone barrette      
from his bride.
      In the cemetery, 
fireflies light their lanterns 
        and lift from the grasses
like ghosts, fog 
an ivory veil 
        blown off the dead like a bomb.

Anastasia K. Gates is a writer, editor, and artist from the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. Nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best New Poets, and awarded the shortlist for the inaugural Oxford Poetry Prize, her poetry has been published or is forthcoming in Gulf Coast, Oxford Poetry, The Penn Review, Tupelo Quarterly, Only Poems, Plainsongs and elsewhere. She earned her Masters of Fine Arts in Poetry from Columbia University in the City of New York and she is currently at work on her debut and second collections of poems.