Emmalea Russo: I’m Emmalea Russo, and this is PoetryNow. I wrote this poem in the spring after the death of my aunt Vera. And I realized exactly one prior to her death, I had been a part of this healing session with an angelic frequency healer. I went to him because I have epilepsy and I will sort of try anything. For as experimental and open as I am with my healing journeys, I am a little bit skeptical, but then, ultimately I feel like I’m a believer and I do think that there’s some other energy out there. And I really felt in both of these instances that there was something I could not explain with my mind. But I felt it very clearly in my body.

(READS POEM)

skype healer
 
in the dreary February underbelly
atlantic ocean outside my window
draped in silk pajamas and flaxen
sweater i lied belly-up on my bed
my laptop resting on a pillow
as the angels conducted brain surgery
scraped my head clean while the angelic
frequency healer directed them by name
asked them questions about my internal
weathers the electric zings of my condition
i was told to rest and hydrate as my brain
and body had been through a lot but I had
to go into the snow take my tired vessels
out into the road and accept the clean clear
air of midwinter the aquarian burst of a zodiacal
electrocution
 
they cured my frequency got it aligned
with godliness or the choirs of them
I would hear exactly one year later upon
Vera’s 3am death death of red throbs
and hydration death of electric conditions
and snow death of vessel and midwinter
 
upon waking I skyped with a Los Angeles
healer in a wooden paneled room and asked
why and when asked him to ask the entities
to see what arrival pulsed the now and dreary
underbelly my laptop on my pillow slanted
insidious glare but so silver

* * *

So Vera is my aunt, and she had a rather painful death. We were gathered in the hospital, my family and I. She was on life-support, and the doctor took her off life-support. It was terrifying because I had never been so close to death. And I was very close with her. It was as though we could feel her slowly leaving. It was just this dreamy liminal space, because we didn’t know when she was going to take her last breath. And so I had left. I went home and went to sleep. And I woke up, and I heard this strange noise around 3AM, 4AM. The noise was like a rejoicing kind of choir. It was as if my body knew Vera is dead. Or Vera left. Vera went somewhere else. And then it turned out she had died around 3AM.

(QUOTING FROM POEM)

they cured my frequency got it aligned / with godliness or the choirs of them / I would hear exactly one year later upon / Vera’s 3am death

Katie Klocksin: That was Emmalea Russo and her poem “skype healer.” I’m Katie Klocksin and this is PoetryNow, a production of the Poetry Foundation. For more about this series, go to poetryfoundation.org/poetrynow.