Grace: Plague in Gray
Lake Angela
I’ve been prepared for the plague for years.
In the cellar, we have enough food for next year
or longer. Any damned thing that can be canned
and sold on sale sits on shining shelves. We’ve
even got pickled pigs’ feet. I used to be annoyed
—we have more salt-choked soup than we can
ever use—until I found out my husband
nearly starved as a boy. I didn’t really believe it
until his sister showed me the old photograph:
a scrawny boy draped in overalls huddles barefoot
and shirtless at his wooden desk, shivering in
shades of grey, while outside the school, snow
piles high, bright in black and white.
Lake Angela is a poet, translator, and dancer-choreographer who creates at the confluence of poetry and the language of dance movement. She holds a PhD in the intersemiotic translation of Austrian Expressionist poetry into dance and has her MFA in poetry. She is a medieval mystic and nonhuman creature. Her books include Organblooms and Words for the Dead from FutureCycle Press, and Scivias Choreomaniae is forthcoming from Spuyten Duyvil. Her work can be read in River Heron Review, Seneca Review, Portland Review, filling Station, Passages North, and others. Lake is poetry editor for Punt Volat and mad advocacy writer for Brainz Magazine. As director of the poetry-dance group Companyia Lake Angela, she presents the value of schizophrenia spectrum creativity. She welcomes visitors at www.lakeangeladance.com.
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