ISSN: 1941-4137
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
Sonia Greenfield was born and raised in Peekskill, New York, and her book, Boy with a Halo at the Farmer's Market, won the 2014 Codhill Poetry Prize. Her work has appeared in a variety of places, including in 2010 Best American Poetry, The Antioch Review, The Bellevue Literary Review, The Los Angeles Review, The Massachusetts Review, and Willow Springs. Her chapbook, American Parable, won the 2017 Autumn House Press/Coal Hill Review prize and is forthcoming in March of 2018. She lives with her husband and son in Hollywood where she edits Rise Up Review and co-directs the Southern California Poetry Festival.
Also by Sonia Greenfield:
Boy with a Halo at the Farmer's Market
Two Poems
What Chemistry Should be Used For
Only a savage wouldn't love
Mendeleev's table, elements
orderly in their squares, a chart
of everything ever assembled,
cell walls partitioning what,
when combined, has been
used to set children on fire.
My son doesn't seize anymore
for half a pill he swallows
with milk twice a day.
Lamotrigine makes two
spoked hexagons of its atomic
model built in a lab, my son's
mouth now free of foam, his
muscles unlocked, eyes
unrolled. Sarin's structure
looks equally clean as an
organophosphorous compound
in that way all deadly things
can when reduced to atomic
formula. It feels as though
every chemical is inert until
acted upon by alchemists trying
to make gold out of bodies
piled on bomb-swept streets.
Sarin gas was in the news with relation to its use in Syria. As a chemical weapon, it does horrible things to people. Naturally, I began thinking, once again, how when the patriarchy wages war or engages in power struggles, mothers lose the most. Are left without their children. Must carry the brunt of mourning. That there are people in this world who calculate the deaths of children as mere collateral makes me feel like I must be from an entirely different planet than the one they come from. At any rate, it's interesting to look up the atomic models of such chemical compounds because there is something comforting in the sterility of science, yet it astonishes that there is a whole industry dedicated to the science of murder just as there is a science dedicated to healing.
Glass: A Journal of Poetry is published monthly by Glass Poetry Press.
All contents © the author.
All contents © the author.
