ISSN: 1941-4137
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
Robert Okaji lives in Texas with his wife, two dogs and some books. He is the author of the chapbook If Your Matter Could Reform (Dink Press), a micro-chapbook, You Break What Falls (Origami Poems Project), and The Circumference of Other, a chapbook-length piece included in Ides: A Collection of Poetry Chapbooks (Silver Birch Press). His work has appeared in Boston Review, Prime Number Magazine, riverSedge, High Window, Hermeneutic Chaos, Kindle Magazine, Clade Song, Eclectica and elsewhere.
What We Say When We Say Nothing
The rain has died and everything follows:
black, white — the law's supposition. Their bodies
glisten only in memory. One says look at me from the steel
table as the scale registers the heart's
weight. Another cries uncertainty in the most certain
of circumstances — laid open, emptied then closed,
the simple mechanics of ritual and form. Throughout my
dreams a line of dark figures shimmer in the cold
corridor, end-to-end, supine and unmoving, assigning
loss. I have fifty-six years and more questions than
answers. The drought testifies to a wrong. A woman
visits her son, a father weeps. Our silence, complicit.
Trayvon Martin. Sandra Bland. Freddie Gray. Michael Brown. Tamir Rice. Eric Garner and countless others. Do we accept these injustices? Do we speak out? And what does silence imply?
Glass: A Journal of Poetry is published monthly by Glass Poetry Press.
All contents © the author.
All contents © the author.
