ISSN: 1941-4137
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
Alison Clara Tan is a Southeast Asian writer based in London. Her poetry appears or is forthcoming in fourteen poems, wildness, The Kenyon Review, Washington Square Review, Under the Radar and Gutter Magazine, among others. She is a finalist for the 2026 Wasafiri New Writing Prize and the 2026 Magma Open Poetry Pamphlet Competition. She has been shortlisted for the Bridport Prize and the Creative Future Writers' Award. She is a Barbican Young Poet, a London Library Emerging Writer and a Brooklyn Poets Fellow.
October 28, 2026
Meditation at 25
Damn all this melodrama, the ancient fripperies that line my brain. Damn the silent milk that glazes my palms and stains everything I touch: my sheets, my sick desires, your damned Rilke who says an artist must cultivate solitude, and I want to go out to a high place and shatter the water. What justifies that clear light of violence? Consider a songbird when it strikes. A boat breaking on a wave. Consider silence on a still summer’s day. In deepest hatred of my littleness, I took secateurs to the damp soil under my shirt and found only the snarl of big red blooms. Their petals were thinner than a starving child. Their faces were sweet and stupid as the earth.
This was one of the first poems I ever wrote, two years ago. I'm glad I'm not 25 anymore.
Glass: A Journal of Poetry is published weekly by Glass Poetry Press.
All contents © the author.
All contents © the author.
