Blackbirdan online journal of literature and the artsSpring 2011 v10n1
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K.C. TROMMER

Virtue

     after The Ladder of Divine Ascent, Mt. Sinai

My skeleton is steady and my body moves
against the black. When the devils fall, I hear them falling—

At first, the only sounds are my hands
releasing and grasping, my feet hushing against the rungs

my hands have passed over. I think I am going up. The ladders tilt away
from me and where one ends, I take up another. Wings of the devils flap.

Cloak of my skin taut to muscle, muscle
a cloak for bone, bone a cloak for—?

If the ladders do not go up, I am lost. Have I stuffed my soul
into the marrow? I hear the shoosh, shoosh when they fall—

If they fall, have their wings failed them? Maybe they are falling up,
flying, maybe I climb across but never up, maybe I am

a devil who knows only her body, who listens only
to her body moving through space, never pausing, rushing through

this black field of air. Hand on a rung, another. Beneath that sound is
something softer, the sound of calluses forming on my hands and feet.  end


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