ISSN: 1941-4137
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
Emma Bolden is the author of three full-length collections of poetry — House Is An Enigma (forthcoming from Southeast Missouri State University Press), medi(t)ations (Noctuary Press, 2016) and Maleficae (GenPop Books, 2013) — and four chapbooks. The recipient of a 2017 Creative Writing Fellowship from the NEA, her work has appeared in The Best American Poetry, The Best Small Fictions, and such journals as the Mississippi Review, The Rumpus, StoryQuarterly, Prairie Schooner, New Madrid, TriQuarterly, the Indiana Review, Shenandoah, the Greensboro Review, and The Journal. She currently serves as Associate Editor-in-Chief for Tupelo Quarterly.
Christmas, 2016
We gather because of the blood that unites us.
We’re told that makes us strangers into a family
who says I love you and leaves the rest to silence.
On Christmas morning, I watch the priest say mass
first to his brothers, second his sisters. Christ’s agony
hangs over poinsettias red as the blood that unites us.
When it comes to family, forgive. Forget. The priest tells us
to knuckle our own eyes until the only thing we can see
is the blood that forces us into a love made out of silence.
After the family lunch, I can’t help but hear terror’s hiss
as my cousins set out gun barrels and muzzles, a feast to teach
their children how to stop the beat of blood, the red that unites us.
One bullet. That’s all it would take to divide us
from our lives. Forgive me, Father. It feels obscene
to watch my own blood forget love and stay silent.
Pink-cheeked, the children play war with real guns.
We are born into fear, an itch on the finger that squeezes
a trigger. Blood may be the force that unites us,
but love is the reason I speak, red-furied. No more silence.
Glass: A Journal of Poetry is published monthly by Glass Poetry Press.
All contents © the author.
All contents © the author.
