ISSN: 1941-4137
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
Khalypso is an 18 year old poet and actress from Sacramento, CA. Their work is available or forthcoming from Calamus Journal, Crab Fat Magazine, Black Napkin Press, and Rising Phoenix Review, as well as several other places. They are a poetry editor for Cerurove Magazine, Culaccino Magazine and the Social Media Manager of Black Napkin Press.
What I Am Hoping My Children Look Like
on my vision board
there's a heart that threads
ten thousand teeth between its tissue
my insurance covers it
on my vision board
i'm fingering the inverted belly of a greased doily, angry at the joke i just told it
i'm trying to enroll it into pre-k
on my vision board
there's a little bit of blood
with the personality of wallpaper
i wish i could tear it down
wish i could have painted it better
on my vision board
everything is pastel yellow or
forest green. i'm not anxious. any
that i might have are breathing and
bright-eyed.
My work is primarily driven by my experiences as a black person living in the 21st-Century. Something I noticed about people very early on in my life is that most non-black folx find it hard to sympathize with black emotional vulnerability and sorrow. Watching a black boy get shot on video or a young black girl brutalized on Facebook Live is something folx can stomach seeing and sure they say it's horrible and awful (if we're lucky enough to be graced with even those kind of white people in our lives) but then fail to understand why we ask them not to plaster our own deaths all over our timelines.
I'm an incredibly tender, sensitive person and I've found that my poems are the only way I can confront people with my humanity and say, "Hey! I have this, too! And you need to respect it."
I grew up all my life believing I'd just get to be a mother — one of my biggest dreams — someday and I was recently diagnosed with PCOS, a hormone disorder, that could facilitate infertility and so all my work lately has focused on that. I've spent a great deal of time mourning the loss of a thing that I never had to begin with and this poem is one of the first pieces I wrote on the topic. I asked myself, "What have you always imagined your kids to be? What would an absent child 'look' like and how do you offer those two visions to each other and to your fear and hope about your future?" This poem is really an indictment of my fear and my hope, a shaming of the duality that comes with uncertainty.
Glass: A Journal of Poetry is published monthly by Glass Poetry Press.
All contents © the author.
All contents © the author.
