ISSN: 1941-4137
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
James A.H. White is a gay, first-generation Asian-American immigrant by way of England and New Zealand. Winner of an AWP Intro Journals Project award, his writing can be found in Best New British & Irish Poets 2018 (selected by Maggie Smith) and, soon, Best New Poets 2018 (selected by Kyle Dargan), in addition to Black Warrior Review, Colorado Review, Lambda Literary, Quarterly West, and Washington Square Review, among others. Author of hiku [pull], a chapbook (Porkbelly Press), he is currently seeking a publisher for his debut full-length collection.
Tuglines
Even wood on the chopping block knows
it’s not a choice to become half
a piece of a tower
of rings.
One for each
year it wasn’t cut into
a joke book or legal pardon or
closet door. Knows when enough is enough
so it splits in half with a crack & doesn’t cry
when it’s piled in a corner behind
the shed beneath a torn
tarp my father
says is fine but
his trying throws on & off
say otherwise. When the bush burns
in Exodus, historians say it could have been
(if real) a misinterpretation of Mt. Sinai,
described earlier as “burning”.
To mom: what you said
God says about
men who lie with
other men is a mountain
inside another mountain inside a
burning bush. This is our universe tossed in
a marble, says the final alien in Men In Black.
This is the path to a place that is
great, say the riled up
sled dogs. When
I came out &
said I’m ashamed for
disappointing you, I also meant
to say I’d been praying again. How at sunset
when my husband offers to load the dishwasher
& walk the dog around the block,
I sit quietly on the balcony
with myself
hoping everything
comes around. The sun seems
to know because it doesn’t stay long
that I’m here for the long haul, that I must ride on
in every Great Race. & even the horizon after
the sun slowly falls through its hands
casually shouts through
them, Mush—
Glass: A Journal of Poetry is published monthly by Glass Poetry Press.
All contents © the author.
All contents © the author.
