Poetry by Angela Sucich

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Your Portrait as Tealight in Burned Votive 
 
Holder of molded wax, melted gold 
of candleflesh, wisplight you tended 
through eventide with no decipherable 

stars to speak of—I see you in morning's 
stark confession: your tired, tunneled body,
memory of warmth and brightness 
 
snuffed before the whole of you could shine.
Cooling, hardening, till the next time someone 
needs. You are the work already done--

The liquified heart that laddered up 
the wick. Air and fuel combusted into heat. 
Prayer astride the smoke. The container 

made for being emptied, for having held. 
Each word a flame, each flame a vow 
fulfilled in the name of the extinguished:

The shape of twinkled moment. Reaction’s 
flare. Sensation’s glow. What lit and lingered 
and couldn’t stay. You ask, why should anyone 

keep you? Your core nearly gone, hollowed 
out, yawning to burn. Yet still here.
And even a tealight can illuminate the night. 





Beasts of Battle
 
Your sister said you used to be like a soldier.
She meant how you soldiered on, even as a boy.
Me, I’m still learning your war. 

Not how your moods spiral in the air--
the teetering of dark dihedral wings, 
a vulturine kettle ready to roost in the first pour 

of evening—but where the first hurt lies. 
The one that left a solitary flier 
in the crowded, scavenging sky.

Old epic poets brought in scavengers 
to stand for doom, swooping in after 
a fight to feed on the fallen. You’d rather

be the bard singing of long ago. You let me 
write poems about you, because I, too, 
live inside a need. No different from 

any creature hungering to know itself 
beyond pain. To transmute the decaying. 
Turning it, bite by bite, into life again.

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Angela Sucich's poems appear in RHINO, Nimrod, SWWIM, Consequence Forum, and elsewhere. She was honorably mentioned for the Pablo Neruda Prize (2021) and Francine Ringold Award (2020). Her chapbook, Illuminated Creatures (Finishing Line Press, 2023), won the New Women’s Voices Chapbook Competition and a Cutbank Chapbook Contest honorable mention. She lives in Leavenworth, Washington, with her husband and daughter.


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