At first all they want is watermelon, big bites, spitting out the black seeds while the red pulp melts in their mouths. They eat it on the ground, their wings resting moplike behind them, then they go on to rice, eating it with their fingers, the grain s grain, weddings exuberance. Sometimes they try sex, approaching it the way you approach a strange dog.
People are too scary.
They d prefer statues of their own kind, angel to angel clapping the way a kid will click plastic horses together, head to head, feet to feet, over and over. It s a vacation, a chance to learn small talk, use tools, play cards, the ace of diamonds, their queen of spades, its red shape pointing both ways, here today, gone tomorrow. They try out our soap, the one for bodies called Darling, and Terror, for big dirt, which they use for excessive dreaming, needing to purge like they need to know who else is working for God, the fire department, the devil, the welders who make light a little too Promethean for comfort, so they run off, go to the zoo in the rain and watch monkeys run round and around their enclosure, inventing chases the way the angels before they go home will make up some more phrases to put into circulation, flying off the handle, hope against hope, nose to the grindstone, expressions none of us will get, but later we ll think up meanings, serious ones, afraid our laughter might scare something off, even the pigeons, their feet, retractable forks, tucked under them in flight. Barbara Ras is Senior Editor at the University of Georgia Press and 1997 winner of the Walt Whitman Award, given by the Academy of American Poets.