The Angel Runs for Office

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“The Angel Runs for Office” by Zachariah Claypole White is the second runner-up of the 2025 Palette Poetry Prize, selected by Palette editors. We’re honored to share this supernal poem with you.

a country dies like any boy from carolina—shadowboxing
himself against the bedroom floor which, in the angel’s hands,
becomes the ship of theseus [you remember that old thought
experiment, don’t you?] every plank replaced till even god cannot
distinguish a sailor from his execution, but still
ants have returned to our back yard [as they always do in may]
bringing ballot-shard leaves down through the cement, dis-
assembling warplanes crumb by crumb. the angel spends
his afternoons, ears pressed to the dirt, cataloging their theologies.
i tell my students history is a transcription of power. the ants
burrow though the consonants of empire, plant sweetgrass in our vowels.

the angel says there are new gods beneath the garden
of wealth. tended by the loving dead they grow
like kudzu over the unlit highway where once my brother
saw the world end and said

only the trees will remember.

Zachariah Claypole White

Zachariah Claypole White is a Philadelphia-based writer and educator, originally from North Carolina. He holds a BA from Oberlin College and an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College, where he was a Jane Cooper Poetry Fellow. His work has appeared in The Best Weird Fiction of the Year, Prairie Schooner, Strange Horizons, and The Rumpus, among others. Zachariah has received support from the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop, Writer’s Digest, and Disquiet International. His awards include Flying South's poetry prize as well as two nominations for the Best of the Net and one for a Pushcart Prize. Zachariah teaches at the Community College of Philadelphia, Saint Joseph’s University, and the Writing Institute at Sarah Lawrence College. You can find more of his work at zachariahclaypolewhite.com.

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