Half Mystic Radio, Season I, Episode VII: When Angels Dress For Senior Prom

Welcome to Episode VII of Season I of Half Mystic Radio! We’re thrilled to share that HMR is now available on all of your favourite podcast platforms: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, Stitcher, & Soundcloud. You can subscribe to the podcast for free, & stream all episodes on those platforms now. Please also leave a rating & review if you enjoy Half Mystic’s work, so that we can reach more listeners! This is the second to last episode of Season I of Half Mystic Radio, so we want to hear your voice as we think about whether & how to potentially record a second season.

If you prefer to listen in here, Episode VII: When Angels Dress for Senior Prom is out now—

This episode features Erin Moran's poems "For Matthew", "When Angels Dress For Senior Prom", & "For Jan", & LYON's song "Le Jardin Zoologique de Nuit".

Erin Moran is a Philadelphia-based poet, freelance journalist, bookstore babe and recent graduate of Temple University. You can find her on Twitter or Instagram.

LYON is the instrumental music project of Andrew Morgan. Modern classical, astral jazz, and experimental works inhabit a space inspired by the imagination of creators like David Axelrod, Alice Coltrane, Antônio Carlos Jobim, Air, and Alexandre Desplat. Collaborators include French author Pierre Ducrozet, poet Candice Wuehle, and Built to Spill cellist John McMahon.

If you enjoyed this snippet of light & are looking forward to more episodes of Half Mystic Radio: don’t go yet! Please do share your thoughts on Episode VII with us using the hashtag #halfmysticspeaks. Or, you can @ us directly on social media—@wearehalfmystic on all platforms.

Want to get involved? We are now open to submissions from both writers & musicians for inclusion in the podcast! Send us your symphony. We promise we won’t flinch. & if you would like to support Half Mystic financially, the best way to do so is by purchasing one of our books or journal issues, right here.

Thanks to popular demand from listeners, we’re excited to tell you that we are also sharing the full text of the poems in each episode from now on. Here we are…

For Matthew

u had hummingbirds flying from yr eyelids
and yr chest was the window that
sent them buzzing away from the second floor
where the wine bottles were piling up. 

pulling the curtains shut, you
silenced them and offered me the kind of
calm i hadn’t known since i stopped singing—
no vibrating against the glass countertop— 

just the train rattling by and the tv on low,
reflecting another city in another time.
i don’t really know what to say about it now,
but i know it changed everything, so

when normandy said she could talk to 
the dead i believed her. she told me i was the first.
neil armstrong?
i was living on the moon before anyone knew his name

when he got there, i told him,
“welcome. the laundry machine’s broken.
i hope you brought quarters,”
but normandy was wrong.

i wasn’t the first, just the first to
write it down. so far ahead i’m
just a few steps from dead last. 
but she said we’re all running in circles anyway,

might as well throw our heads
back and laugh about it.

When Angels Dress For Senior Prom

they check their makeup in crystal glasses and 
kiss each other’s cheeks. They leave lipstick marks 
of pink & blue and smear shimmer on their eyes. 
They climb into each other’s Nissans and leave 
their cameras in the glove compartments. 
They get out of the car. They don’t cry in the bathroom. 
Their dresses don’t get caught in the door, don’t 
tear at the seams like the fabric of space and 
time on early Tuesday mornings and the days after Christmas. 
They don’t stumble in heels, they don’t twist their ankles. 
They don’t let anyone touch them. They tie their hair in 
blue & yellow ribbons and wipe their hands on 
tulle skirts that don’t quite fit on bodies that don’t quite fit— 
they spin and spin and spin but never fall.

For Jan

Just when I think that surely this time I’ve
made myself unlovable,
the sun looks down at me with the
understanding and fury of
a 2 am duet of four eyes that never sleep.
What a special thing to be here and
what a special thing to leave.