ISSN: 1941-4137
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
Alyx Chandler is a longtime poet who has lived in the Birmingham area for about 2 years. She graduated at the University of Alabama where she studied journalism, marketing and creative writing and won the 2015 Holle Media Writing Award for investigative journalism. She is the features editor for Starnes Publishing, first place poetry winner in the Alabama Conclave Writer’s 2018 contest and is in the process of applying to MFA schools to study creative writing. She loves to read everything from magical realism to memoirs and volunteers with DISCO teaching poetry during the school year.
Dissolution
They wake up drenched in July
without families, without air conditioning
as officials yank their bodies off beds
like gauze off skin, cycling them into a cafeteria
for a murky glass of water, mouth hot as wax,
detained in the throat of ICE. In Etowah, there is
a heat in the South that breaks down elements
like acid. Even the tiles burn, worse each year
as they realize they can’t flee if they don’t exist,
only allow themselves to enter fevered dreams:
delusions that digest them alive and whole,
a snake eating a mouse. Cracked clarity,
a burst vessel in the eye, sweat waking them up
again and again in the night, clawing at a pain
that is illiterate when left untold
Glass: A Journal of Poetry is published monthly by Glass Poetry Press.
All contents © the author.
All contents © the author.
