ISSN: 1941-4137
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
Dena Igusti is an Indonesian-Muslim poet based in Queens, New York. She is currently the co-founder of Short Line!, an organization dedicated to connecting artists to their communities, to each other, to resources, and to themselves. She is a 2018 NYC Youth Poet Laureate Ambassador, and 2017 Urban Word Federal Hall Fellow. Her work has been featured in BOAAT Press, The Shanghai Literary Review, and more.
sunat: a recollection
[scene: ME and BODY separate to two masses. they reunite 10 years later to discuss what happened]
so how did this happen?
BODY: she reduced me to small and called it transformation. she let me die and called herself the martyr. she cut out part of me, made it my relative. a blood bound thing. not because it is an extension of us but because it’s a bruised purplepink mass that shares the same red i spill if it still has any left.
it is not part of me. i am related to it. (jabs thumb towards me) she is not a part of me, we’re just bound by disposition and tragedy.
ME: i tried to save both of us by choosing the hands that might have killed one of us.
BODY: might? it happened!
ME: but you’re still here
BODY: doesn’t mean i didn’t die
…
ME: (shifts in seat) anyway, what i did allowed us to stay here
how would you describe each other?
BODY: a salt.
ME: i guess, then water. i’ve died in it—
BODY: shut the fuck up
ME: —i’ve driven it to thirsty mouths. i’ve made it outline then called it silhouette. i built me a dam and drained myself of it. andromeda. angelica. i’ve drowned you in salt and called it solution. i swallowed you whole, said i made the sacrifice.
(ME stares longingly at BODY. BODY stares at the floor. interviewer references this interaction to write thought piece on how [savage] women sacrifice their [savage] bodies for their [savage] ancestors, why none of them belong in the [civil] nation, doesn’t mention the hands, the mass, the before or after-math)
Glass: A Journal of Poetry is published monthly by Glass Poetry Press.
All contents © the author.
All contents © the author.
