Editor's Choice brings you a poem from a new book selected as a must-read. Our feature editor today is Phillip B. Williams.
Dimitri Reyes
On every counter and beside
the entertainment center,
space is claimed by little wings plucking harps.
Trumpets leading
an unknown charge of credit cards.

Boy knows heaven and its angels live
in his home and aren't charged rent.

He cleans the faces of angels
to be closer to figuras.
To steal their breath
to simulate their worth.

Every Sunday he wipes down bookshelf altars
asking white candle for permission.
When lit, boy anoints their feet to be
reminded of words not often uttered.

They speak in minimalism,
this is their design casting shadows
on a picture frame's upper lip.

He thinks himself into creationism:
from-factory, to-check, to-store, to-home.

A mom to always swallow pennies like pills,
counting them all in the bank account
of her belly

so boy answers to these tchotchkes
because angels breed more angels.

Boy reimagines her prized figurine
from first communion
with its beady cherubim eye.

A lure, the circumferencing
of a thrift store halogen light
shining on more porcelain dust collectors.

And he thought he heard it say,
she made me once
or
she is one of us.
from the book EVERY FIRST & FIFTEENTH / Digging Press
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"Precious Moments" and the majority of the poems from "Every First and Fifteenth" are acts of stripping down nostalgia to its core in order to bear witness to what was and the memories and decisions that still linger. This poem in particular, which finds its home in the ritualization of Sunday morning cleaning, expands upon the religiosity of matriarchy, capitalism, property, and the passing of time.

Dimitri Reyes on "Precious Moments"
"Woman Shocked by Uber Eats Driver's Surprise Gift and Poem: 'Let's bless this man'"

"In Texas, Tracey Ramirez ordered food via UberEats—but was pleasantly surprised with a gift that accompanied the meal. On Jan. 5, the delivery driver filled a goody bag full of candy, complete with a handwritten note and poem."

via NEW YORK POST
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What Sparks Poetry: 
Aaron Anstett on James Wright's "Eisenhower's Visit to Franco, 1959"

"This poem, at once narrative, lyrical, and political, led me to more James Wright poems and to Spanish poets beyond Machado, particularly in the bilingual anthology Roots and Wings, which I discovered in my high school library along with the still-powerful Hayden Carruth anthology, The Voice That Is Great Within Us. From there followed a continuing lifetime of delight, bafflement, and discovery in poems."
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