A Body of Still Marble, by Lacy Snapp

St. Andrea della Valle, by Giacomo Antonio Fancelli (Italy) 1655

A Body of Still Marble
 
I.
Bees here don’t know it’s January 
and 40 degrees, but still push their bodies
onto mint stalks of germander, dipping 
the lavender petals, testing 
strength versus weight like lovers 
on an old wooden swing. But who am I 
to claim it’s too cold, that this is not 
the best time to harvest pollen, transfer 
from flower to another? Who am I 
to say they are forbidden 
from feeding themselves in winter,  
or that they shouldn’t gather 
the largest hoard of other lonely 
bees to huddle close, even if it means 
their honey storage will then deplete 
that much faster? 
 
II.
Seagulls, where is the coast, the body 
of water you were once 
called to? You perch and hunt 
in the middle of this ancient city, 
this new feast of trash from the street 
fattening your kind after your exodus 
from the shoreline. 
 
I know the swift with its forked tail 
seems to be going nowhere. 
Its entire life is spent in flight, 
feeding, mating mid-air, 
collecting materials straight from the sky 
to cushion its nest, one tucked into 
an abandoned or unseen place: 
beneath a loose tile, inside a gap 
in the windowsill, under 
a building’s eave. 
 
III.
The wingbeats of birds and bees,
them slicing negative space in my mind,
is fleeting compared to the stone-
carved wings of the solitary angel 
of St. Andrea della Valle. One is 
raised as if longing for flight, 
but the other is folded behind 
her back as though she has accepted 
she will never leave that building’s top corner, 
never see the blue surf of the sea. 
 
Her hands, too, are solidified 
contradictions. The right shows her palm open 
and upturned but with fingertips 
beginning to close. The left arm rises 
up with the momentum of the outstretched 
wing, but her hand curves around some piece of her world 
that is now missing, or perhaps 
was never there. Her mate, too, 
was never made. Giacomo Antonio Fancelli 
was tasked in 1655 to carve two angels, 
but the first’s form was criticized 
so much, even by the Pope, that he resigned 
from the job. Said if he wants the other 
angel, let him do it alone.
 
IV.
The angel remains alone, head turned away
from her missing half, her un-
sculpted celestial twin, as her chin 
tilts down, away from the sun. 
Her right hand forever reaches 
out to bronze star 
she will never touch, and from that 
height, she cannot hide 
that she will never know the huddled 
warmth and rhythmic humming 
of a hoard of bees. Never know 
the sensation of perpetual flight, a lifetime 
of movement like the swift, enough to take 
seven round trips to the moon. 

Lacy Snapp

Lacy Snapp is a teacher and woodworker in East Tennessee. She is a 2023 MFA in Writing graduate of Vermont College of Fine Arts and holds an MA in English from East Tennessee State University. She serves on the board of the Johnson City Poets Collective and as the current Chair of Programs for the Poetry Society of Tennessee. Her first chapbook, Shadows on Wood, was published in 2021 (Finishing Line Press). Her work including poetry, interviews, reviews, and nonfiction appears in Still: The Journal, Snapdragon, Tupelo Quarterly, Appalachian Places, and multiple Women of Appalachia Project anthologies, among others, and is forthcoming in About Place Journal, Cutthroat, and Appalachian Journal.