{"id":2955,"date":"2010-12-31T08:16:19","date_gmt":"2010-12-30T19:16:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/?p=2955"},"modified":"2012-11-12T21:25:03","modified_gmt":"2012-11-12T08:25:03","slug":"i-wish-you-angels","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/2010\/12\/31\/i-wish-you-angels\/","title":{"rendered":"“I Wish You Angels” by Joanna Preston"},"content":{"rendered":"

I wish you Angels \u2013<\/h3>\n

riding up and down
\nand up in elevators
\ncrowding around your
\ncomputer screen
\nemailing God
\nin the lunch break.<\/p>\n

Angels scalding
\ntheir tongues tasting
\ncoffee, constrained
\nto \u201cdrat\u201d<\/em> and \u201cdarn\u201d<\/em>
\nand \u201coooohhhh!\u201d<\/em>
\nI wish you Angels staring<\/p>\n

into department-store
\nwindows, striking up
\nconversations with dress
\nshop dummies. I wish
\nyou Angels with fishnet
\nstockings and misplaced<\/p>\n

body piercings, two years
\nbehind the trend. Angels
\ntrying to follow cricket
\nor rugby, buffeting spectators
\nwith jubilant wings.
\nI wish you Angels<\/p>\n

drag-racing owls
\nat midnight, Angels
\nperched on traffic lights
\ndrumming aimless feet
\nagainst the green,
\nI wish you Angels,<\/p>\n

whistling.<\/p>\n

\u00a9 Joanna Preston
\nfrom<\/em> The Summer King<\/strong><\/em>, Otago University Press, 2009<\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Sometimes a poem comes along that sneaks up on you and takes you by surprise. For me, this has been one of those poems. I thought I had read Joanna Preston’s collection The Summer King<\/em><\/strong> from cover to cover when it came out last year, but for some reason, dipping into the book again in the run up to Christmas, I discovered “I Wish You Angels”<\/em> as if for the first time. And I loved it—just something about the quirkiness and insouciance of it, and the delight of all those different angels, drag racing owls at midnight, jubilant spectators at sports events, emailing God on their lunch breaks … Today is the last day of 2010, and coming out of the Christmas round and into the New Year I thought that I would like to wish you all angels—quirky, insouciant, jubilant angels for all of your new year celebrations and throughout 2011.<\/p>\n

About Joanna:<\/h4>\n

An Australian by birth and married to a New Zealander, Joanna Preston is a Tasmanaut poet, editor, and freelance poetry teacher. Joanna graduated from the University of Glamorgan with a MPhil in Creative Writing and her first collection, The Summer King<\/strong><\/em>, won both the 2008 Kathleen Grattan Award (New Zealand) and the 2010 Mary Gilmore Poetry Prize (Australia.) She co-edits Kokako<\/em> magazine with Patricia Prime, and will be the judge of the NZPS 2011 International Haiku competition.<\/p>\n

I wish you Angels \u2013riding up and down
\nand up in elevators
\ncrowding around your
\ncomputer screen
\nemailing God
\nin the lunch break.<\/p>\n

Angels scalding
\ntheir tongues tasting
\ncoffee, constrained
\nto \u201cdrat\u201d and \u201cdarn\u201d
\nand \u201coooohhhh!\u201d
\nI wish you Angels staring<\/p>\n

into department-store
\nwindows, striking up
\nconversations with dress
\nshop dummies. I wish
\nyou Angels with fishnet
\nstockings and misplaced<\/p>\n

body piercings, two years
\nbehind the trend. Angels
\ntrying to follow cricket
\nor rugby, buffeting spectators
\nwith jubilant wings.
\nI wish you Angels<\/p>\n

drag-racing owls
\nat midnight, Angels
\nperched on traffic lights
\ndrumming aimless feet
\nagainst the green,
\nI wish you Angels,<\/p>\n

whistling.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I wish you Angels \u2013 riding up and down and up in elevators crowding around your computer screen emailing God in the lunch break. Angels scalding their tongues tasting coffee, constrained to \u201cdrat\u201d and \u201cdarn\u201d and \u201coooohhhh!\u201d I wish you Angels staring into department-store windows, striking up conversations with dress shop dummies. I wish you […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,14,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2955","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-funstuff","category-other-writers","category-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2955","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2955"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2955\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2963,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2955\/revisions\/2963"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2955"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2955"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2955"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}