Seraphim

This is a book about Black womxn and joy. About celebration. If you’ve ever wondered how Black womxn can burn with such vibrance and exuberance, Seraphim is the answer.

This isn’t about the pain of being a Black womxn. Seraphim is about how Black womxn and girls carve out, create, and pass along delight within and without.

Seraphim were created only to serve or praise, but purely by existing they illuminate and touch those around them with their light.

Seraphim is about understanding that Black womxn are celebrations. Created for exultation. When others call us “loud,” we know we’re fervent, passionate, and radiant. Our joy is incandescent, undeniable, and powerful.

Angelique Zobitz (she/her/hers) is the author of the chapbooksBurn Down Your House from Milk & Cake Press and Love Letters to the Revolution from American Poetry Journal. Her debut full-length collection of poetry, Seraphim, was published by CavanKerry Press in 2024. Her work has been a 2022 Jake Adam York finalist, 2022 Philip Levine Prize semifinalist, 2022 St. Lawrence finalist, 2022 Tupelo Prize finalist, and 2021 Georgia Poetry Prize finalist. Nominated multiple times for Best of the Net, Best New Poets, and the Pushcart Prize, her poems have appeared inThe Journal,Sugar House Review,Obsidian: Literature & Arts of the African Diaspora, and many others. She can be found at www.angeliquezobitz.com and on Twitter and Instagram @angeliquezobitz.

Sister/Seraphim, Inextinguishable Light

They dancing and singing tonight.

Black Barbies backlit by gas station fluorescence

stunning—singing holy, holy, holy.

Their loud praises rattling my window,
syncopated steps, wings out, rhythm on, radiant
with the backbeat unbroken, backs unbroken,
unfettered and unbothered in eight and sixteen time.

This very night there before me is an angel and
I saw her drop it low.

All while cars pull in and out,
top off, or fill up at the pumps—
I can relate to being half empty
and thirsting to be full.

She—her—they—they blazing.

This could be worship.
Loud and exuberant as every light-

leached club where I once got hot and sweaty
to reggae, rubbed underneath some body
as vigorously as kindling before catching fire.

It could be easy to forget how
good adoration feels (I can’t forget),
what good feels like (paradise).

They so flame and I see it.

It could be heaven.
This lot of half-leveled bumpy concrete
glittering full jeweled with bottle shards and
wrapping paper confetti.

They could burn it all down.
But—Glory.

They invite us to join the chorus.

from A Mouth Full of Prayers for Wendy Williams

I.

What woman hasn’t been bent
back from her self, skinned down
to interior muscle left, an exposed
shell contaminated with specks of dirt?
An oyster cracked open early ugly
vulnerable, ready to misshapen, pearl.
Who hasn’t borne flawed love
just to call themselves loved, to see
love in the sentence next to their names,
accepting half of what could be whole
because at least you are not alone?
Gal, listen…

from The Constant Lesson

Her body shaped to bend. [Plié. From plier.]
What will the world ask her to compromise?

How many ways? To rise. [Relevé. From relever.] Each lift and strain,
each fall that causes weeping, practice for the moment, she stands or leaps

again. To stretch. [Tendu. From étendre.] She leans into the strain, tendons
taut elastic until limber and nimble, contorting and lengthening, enthusiastic

and fearless on the street in taking
space. To glide. [Glissade. From glisser.] Float fly wing baby girl

soar.

Angelique Zobitz’s Seraphim radiate s with flames and fierceness. Steeped in survival and salvation, devastation and affirmation, incantation and citation, Seraphim is a tribute to revolutions, delivering homage to an array of Black women including bell hooks, Roberta Flack, Megan Thee Stallion, and “Black Barbies backlit by gas station fluorescence // stunning—singing holy, holy, holy.” In Seraphim’s choral and volcanic world, Zobitz alchemizes terror into courage and “expose[s] what’s damaged // to scrutiny and light,” as she invites the reader toward their own revolution and revelation and reminds us to “let sing, / every word.”
—Simone Muench, author of Hex & Howl

Angelique Zobitz’s stunning debut, Seraphim, is animated by a desire not easily pinned down. “This could be worship,” she writes in one poem. “Loud and exuberant as every light // leached club where I once got hot and sweaty / to reggae, rubbed underneath some body / as vigorously as kindling before catching fire.” The poems in this book spring from that genuine messiness of life, where faith and sensuality are not mutually exclusive, but spill over into one another. Seraphim explores and celebrates Blackness, a childhood in Chicago, motherhood, love, sex, home-cooked meals, the individual and collective power of Black women, survival, and the power of language. In these full-throated exaltations, Zobitz’s language sparks and combusts on the tongue and in the heart. These poems will pull you under, time and again, and then raise you back up, gasping and full of light.
—Brian Barker, author of Vanishing Acts

I have read countless brilliant poetry collections, but only a handful that read as revelations. Seraphim is one of these revelations. If this book were a bird, it would be part bird-of-paradise, part red-winged blackbird. It is a celebration of Black joy, power, and womanhood and a hymn for those who question God “having learned he only // made you to sing his praises.” Zobitz asks timeless questions about humanness, suffering, truth, and love in the context of America—in its violence, beauty, and history of casting out people who dare rise in spite of those who would keep them down. Zobitz vividly illuminates and elevates us in that rising—a force which may “give us release / or burn us to the ground.” Seraphim is a prayer, lamentation, and celebration strung from “beauty of glass littered fields grown over, cracks / exposed for all to see.”
—Joan Kwon Glass, author of Night Swim

112 pages
Angelique Zobitz
Pub date – April 2024
Trade paper – 6 x 9″
$18
ISBN: 978-1-960327-04-8
Emerging Voices in Poetry