Born Peacock-Wingéd in a Smokeless Fire, He Said
Remember when you were nineteen and so
whiskey-drunk one night that you lost
consciousness while screwing your
long glitter-pink almond nails into clay-
brick earth? Remember, now, the wet
dirt and cut grass on your face
in the dark, welcome as you attempted
fusion? Because you knew that release
meant you would fall off the face of your
home, plummet hapless into sky? Remember
how it felt in your body: memory
inexplicable étoilée etiolated dive gathering
velocity through icy dust, fireballs floating
past your supine form, stripped of its weight
in life? Stygian pitch painful incipient
itch like calcified wisdom breaking
through skin on your back now you are flying
in the glitter-open black. Smile. There
it is. Remember, darling, you can still let go.
Author’s note on this POSSESSION-themed poem:
(content note: suicidal ideation)
One one level, this poem uses the metaphor of clinging to the earth and the possibility of letting go and falling off into the sky, to explore the spiritual and intellectual temptation of following a Dark Angel and his whispers to adopt new ideas, new morality, to break away from the life the speaker has spent decades building with constant struggle, sacrifice, self-restraint, empathy. Instead of embracing the often thankless work of keeping her heart open, the speaker feels tempted by the idea to leave it all behind and embrace hedonism and self-prioritization and the satisfaction of her personal desires — a moral paradigm that she thinks might very well culminate in being literally possessed by darker forces. TLDR: it's Thomasin, being asked if she'd like to live deliciously. On another level, however, the poem can be read as the temptation to more literally, physically let go of the world — to go flying off the face of the earth by committing suicide. The temptation to surrender to a more metaphorical kind of possession, to give up and let oneself be overtaken by the dark forces in this world that can make remaining present here feel difficult. The dark forces are continuously whispering reminders that she can choose to give up any time, that this possibility will never really leave her.
Fox Henry Frazier is a poet, essayist, and fiction writer from upstate New York. Her third full-length poetry collection, Break Blow Burn, is forthcoming from White Stag Publishing in 2026. Her debut novel, Francesca, is forthcoming in 2027.