Paula Colangelo is currently pursuing an MFA in Poetry at Drew University where she received The Jane Coil Cole Scholarship. She previously attended Binghamton University where she was awarded the Academy of American Poets George R. Dunham Prize. She presently teaches poetry at a rehabilitation center in Wayne, New Jersey.---------
Trying to Fathom the Akashic Record
It vibrates on its own plane,
a universe of information in a library
of light––a savant in baggy overalls
recalling the history of the world.
I’d like to tap into it as Apollo’s priestess
ingested laurel leaves and vapor
through a chasm in the earth.
It lies behind the walls of dreams
that disappear when I shake
the hangover of sleep.
I’ll catch its scent.
Summon events of past lives the way
my husband picks up his Fender
and plays any lick he’s learned
since he was twelve.
Grievances assemble
through generations, a crowd
of raging vigilantes––
cancer gene, tendency
toward depression,
erratic heart.
Birth pretends to deliver us clean.
The squawking baby grows,
prevails, until
we begin again.
This is how another’s pain
once suffered in a well
too deep to measure
lives on in the bones of my body.