C. Dale Young, Debra Allbery and Charles Baxter in The Kenyon Review

New work by faculty members C. Dale Young, Debra Allbery, and Charles Baxter appear in the Winter 2014 Issue of The Kenyon Review.

Young’s poem “Wrestling with the Angel” is published online:

—after Léon Bonnat

First off, the wings were too perfect.
Second, that the angel is both pushing the man
with his left hand while embracing him with his right,
the angel’s right leg stretching away from the man while
the left one is anchored and wrapped between

the man’s legs, the angel’s pelvis locked to the man’s
left hip, only the man’s loincloth of fur separating them,
the angel hoisted from the ground by the man’s embrace—
nothing remotely erotic about this; nothing at all . . .
Both are muscular, though the man, who must be

named Jacob, is slightly more so. This embrace,
as we are told, is neither classical in its presentation
nor the least bit realistic; the man and the angel
are joined belly to chest, the sweat on their skins a glue.
I would be lying if I said I only noticed this casually,

the way Jacob’s lifting of the angel is counterbalanced by
the angel’s resistance, the way it almost looks like a dance.
I would be lying if I said I wasn’t excited
by the sight of those two male bodies struggling:
in the museum of adolescence, this is hardly unexpected.

…

Continue reading online at The Kenyon Review.