ISSN: 1941-4137
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
Tian Sánchez-Ballado (b. 1989) is a CubaRican-American poet and author of Baby Back Bitch (2025) and Every Fig Has a Wasp Inside (2025). His Southern Gothic, post-lyric work examines how trauma, illness, and identity pass through families — what gets inherited in blood, silence, and ritual. Writing from Florida's queer margins, he bears witness to survival: living with chronic illness, navigating inheritance, and finding sweetness despite life's stings. His poetry has been featured in The Acentos Review, Voicemail Poems, and Kirkus Magazine, and he was a finalist for the 2025 Button Poetry First Book Contest. Sanchez-Ballado is a classically trained cellist, tenor, and conductor with over a decade of K-12 and collegiate orchestra teaching. His research and scholarship have appeared in journals such as The American String Teacher. He lives in Tallahassee, FL, with his husband Arman and their very fluffy cat, Mika.
September 2, 2026
Invocation
(nec tamen consumebatur)
I have burned,
but I was not consumed.
This is my table —
these are my words,
my bread.
“To the child I was.”
Response:
“And also, the children we were.”
Amen.
"Invocation" opens All He Wanted Was Softness, a work-in-progress collection structured around the order of Presbyterian worship — from Gathering through Benediction. The manuscript explores my queer CubaRican identity, childhood trauma, survival, and the reclamation of faith after harm, tracing an arc from confession to communion. The Latin subtitle of this poem — nec tamen consumebatur, "yet it was not consumed" — comes from Exodus 3:2, the burning bush. I reclaimed that image for myself: I have been burned but not destroyed, and now set my own table with my own words. The call-and-response format ("To the child I was" / "And also, the children we were") mirrors liturgical exchange while expanding the congregation beyond me to include all who recognize themselves in it. Rather than asking permission to belong in sacred space, the poem assumes it. It functions as both opening prayer and thesis: survival as sacrament, testimony as bread.
Glass: A Journal of Poetry is published weekly by Glass Poetry Press.
All contents © the author.
All contents © the author.
