ISSN: 1941-4137
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
Kathy Fagan's fifth book is Sycamore (Milkweed, 2017), for which she was awarded Ohio Poet of the Year. Her first book was a National Poetry Series winner and her second collection won the Vassar Miller Prize. New work appears in The Nation, Blackbird, Crazyhorse, The Bennington Review and Tin House. Fagan currently directs the MFA Program at Ohio State, where she also serves as Series Editor for the OSU Press/The Journal Wheeler Poetry Prize.
"Disobedience"
Even when forced to say something, I don't
say dead, don't say she passed —
as if death were a test she failed
until she didn't.
In fact, she was good
at it, vanishing quickly as the lost
mother in the poem by A.A. Milne,
who disobeys her child by going
down to the end of the town alone,
never to return;
she'd been warned.
I first read the poem as an adult,
too late for the irony to be lost
on me, role reversal the poem's sweet joke.
Bittersweet.
I say I lost my mother,
when forced to say something, because
I was the child. I had been hers
to lose. I know she was good at it,
having looked for her all this time.
Glass: A Journal of Poetry is published monthly by Glass Poetry Press.
All contents © the author.
All contents © the author.
