the city is full of wings

Every order of angels stakes out a hallowed ground, nesting in some exposed crevice of the city like their Columbidae cousins. The Ophanim like subway tunnels, the thrumming of them, the rush of air. The Cherubim prefer something a little more stately, expensive dining rooms where their oxen faces lip at the china plates, and their wings brushing back and forth lazily.

(Seraphs try not to fit more than two of them on the same plane of physical existence at once. It crowds out the quarks.)

The Dominions gather on the steps of the capitol building. One of them picked up a smoking habit from an alderman, and now they all carry those cardboard cases tucked in the folds of their palliums. You can see them there sometimes, lighting cigarettes with the fire of their swords.

The Powers like shipping yards, loading docks, late at night. They wrestle one another in the gravel, all six arms flailing, monstrous mouths laughing through bared teeth. The strength of the Lord likes a headlock, though it’s difficult when there are three heads. Principalities tend to congregate in the Art Institute—they trail through exhibits in twos or threes, brushing against people’s coat sleeves, speaking to one another in dead men’s poetry.

The low-level angels—the unaffiliated stragglers, loners, and miscellaneous celestial riffraff—find places wherever they can. Last month it was a hole in the wall Thai place where one of them was a server; the month before, it was the public library. They play card games in Starbucks and bless the baristas under their breath—sometimes when they’re gathered at the lakeshore, they like flashing their halos, distracting bikers and joggers.

Act your rank, the Virtues admonish them, when they see the mere angels giggling into their feathers.

Make us, the angels jeer, and race away laughing, their wings catching the wind like sails.

angels, unawares

some have entertained angels unawares, but others get this--seraphim crashing on your couch
(metaphorically of course; they wouldn't fit on a sofa) with their hundred hundred wings beating the air lazily; their beryllium eyes shut. "You should get a place," you may tell them over breakfast. "Not that you aren't always welcome; but don't you want somewhere to call your own?" But the seraphim merely blinks; eyes sparking; and goes back to coaxing the coffee maker not to burn your morning caffiene high

(they don't understand property you see; don't understand the concept of owning a piece of the dust--earth is humanity's birthright, and all else is god's)

(...yes even them; their wings, their eyes, the half-burnt coffee on their 7-dimensional tongue. You do not need to have a place of your own when you yourself are not your own, silly human)

(so the seraphim keep dragging themselves in at 2am, starlight caught in their feathers and whiskey on their breath--whispering ''are you up? are you up? the kingdom of god is at hand--come and kiss me,'' before collapsing back onto the sofa; wings fluttering in the angelic approximation of helpless giggles)

(...it turns out seraphim do indeed fit on the couch; with just enough room for one sleep-deprived human, waiting for the kingdom of god to arrive)

urban angels

there’s a seraph who sleeps in the pews of the city’s churches because it’s the only place she feels comfortable stretching out her wings, feathers nearly blocking out the stained glass windows. At night, the prayers embedded in the stonework whisper to her, a litany of please and help and need, as inexorable and unceasing as the rattle of the subway beneath her.
and there’s an angel of the third sphere who plays pickup basketball with a young prophet—a young man who walks through metal detectors each morning to get to a high school where only fifty percent will graduate, but loves calculus and singing in church every Sunday. “Your jump shot’s insane, man,” the saint-to-be laughs, clapping the angel on the back, right between the wings. And the angel, who can see how the light catches on the young man’s halo, laughs too.
and there are ophanim sitting on the girders of half-built skyscrapers, unafraid of falling; passing sandwiches and thermoses of campbell’s soup between them, speaking in tongues about the traffic on I-90 and last night’s Bears game.
and Israfel sneaks away from celestial choir practice to attend concerts in the park, but he usually ends up absently sketching equations modeling the wavelengths into the grass. There’s an adjunct mathematics professor who sometimes attends, and afterwards they discuss hyperharmonic series in the gathering dusk.
angels in the public libraries, reading children’s books and touching the illustrations with just their fingertips, like beholding a sacred text.
angels moving along the cracks in the pavement and between the alleyways; going without fear into the worst neighborhoods, because they have walked in the valley of death and fear no evil—not even the mastery of it that humanity demonstrates through abject poverty, ignorance, social immobility.
angels glaring at potholes  and rolling their eyes at delays (the work of the Deceiver, no doubt) and running to catch a subway that goes not even a hairsbreadth of the speed their wings could carry them.
angels looking up at the statues made in their image, grey forms on grey pedestals with granite wings, and snickering to themselves. (The artist missed a few hundred eyes, they think; mouths and limbs and grace and song and fire and flight—)
but then they gaze up at the brutalist skyscrapers with windows reflecting the flame-colored sunset and low-hanging exhaust, spindly radio towers forming a winking blue halo if you crane your neck just so. And the angels think maybe the humans caught a glimpse of the divine after all.

spark-spattered wheels of god

Ophanim
(Hebrew, אוֹפַנִּים ’ōfannīm)

This was the appearance and structure of the wheels: They sparkled like beryl, and all four looked alike. Each appeared to be made like a wheel intersecting a wheel.Their rings were so high that they were dreadful, and all four rings were full of eyes all around. (Ezekial 1:15-18)

i. there are angels in the subway.
(and on the bus; and the interlocking highways, beat down beneath endless tire treads; and on the bikes darting through intersections like silverfish through shoals; and growling in time with the engine, their wings tucked away behind the staring-bright headlights of cabs; and racing alongside, their bare feet on blacktop, spinning, skimming, urging homeward, homeward)
but mostly, there are angels in the subway.
ii. ophanim cannot keep still--they are not grigori, they are not made to merely watch. the angel called raziel finds herself breaking the minor rules of physics behind the wheel of an ambulance; writes friction off as unnecessary when a child's pulse is fluttering. the angel jophiel has no patience for such metal casing, prefers the marriage of physics and humanity that is a messenger bicycle; the art of keeping your balance by moving forward.
sometimes, when the road is slick with rain and streetlights are burning white and hazy, it is almost like flying.
iii. (there is a moment before the subway train appears, when the earth shudders under approaching thunder, and the stale air of the station rouses, churns, whipping itself against the walls, and indeed the very world heralds the coming of the prime mover.)
iv. once a month they gather on the girders of a half-built skyscraper--there is always one, the city does not keep still any more than they do. they speak in tongues about the traffic on I-90, exchange recipes, stretch out their wings after long days of hiding feathers beneath false skins. they are always shifting, sparking; a hundred thousand eyes and all saccadic.
the next day, the girders are scored with tire tracks no workman can explain and raziel and jophiel run, laughing, to the subway, leaving skid marks where their feet don't touch the ground.
v. in chicago, the subway is called the El.
(angels do not believe in coincidence.)