Poet Blas Falconer reads "The Annunciation" from his second collection, The Foundling Wheel, released in October by Four Way Books. To hear more, check out Falconer reading "To press the air, to bless the silhouette [1]" and the title poem, "The Foundling Wheel [2]."

The Annunciation

Whether she lifts a hand to her breast in protest or 
surprise, I can’t say, though we know how it ends. 

He reaches out as if to keep her there, her fingers on 
the open book of prayer or song, the cloth draped 

across her waist. Faith, he might have said, 
as the cells of disbelief began to multiply: a son 

who’d face great pain? Certain death? In one account, 
she fled. He chased her back into the house, 

not Gabriel, a pull inside the ribs until 
she acquiesced, exchanging one loss for another. 

X-rays expose a sign of someone else’s brush. 
Experts doubt the dress or wings are his 

but claim the sleeve, the buttoned cuff, a triumph, 
young as the artist was, not having found 

perspective: the vanishing point too high, one hand 
too large, the flaw in her face: a lack of fear or awe.