Hellebore Treatment
She hid her grace in the giant sequoia
and forgot about it.
The angel became human.
Our hands joined around the wooden table,
I could do nothing as the vessel’s eyes bled
then burned from their sockets,
leaving charred holes and the smell of sulfur.
“She saw what she shouldn’t.”
Seven golden candlesticks, seven churches.
The unwelcome being must be killed
with an iron rod.
“I give permission.”
The table shot across the room,
the angel’s filaments lit up,
the demon, cast out,
finds seven more of his kind.
Bio: Patti Jeane Pangborn is a student in the M.F.A. program at Columbia College Chicago, where she also teaches first-year writing and served as editorial assistant for Court Green 12. Her poetry can be found in issue 27 of Columbia Poetry Review.