ISSN: 1941-4137
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
Erika Walsh is a co-founder and editor of A VELVET GIANT, a genreless literary journal. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Hotel Amerika, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, Hobart, Peach Mag, Juked, and elsewhere. She was selected as a semi-finalist in the 2017 Button Poetry Chapbook Contest. She lives in NY, NY, where she teaches writing to children and teens.
No place but where god is
No place but where god shines a light to examine
The tube of your throat (your halo your hole). Where god got evicted. Where god got covered by the earth
when we made it. Where heaven got a sheet tossed
over it. Where god is ms. schmidt
with a white paper cup. One little black olive
floats at the rim. She says imagine
we’re in ancient greece? Now everyone eat
one olive. You are the one
who will hold the fruit and will look at it and who will not eat. Where god is years and years later when you finally bite
into an olive, elliptic and salted. You think not of greece
but of italy. The ocean someone who gave birth to someone who gave birth to someone who gave birth to you once had to cross and she was scared —
The olive
slick with oil — slick only
with what you would expect —
whole and unchewed at the pit
of your sacrum
hung on to the spine between two wings
of bone — hollow, a knot. It feels almost
like right before cumming. God
keeps you open
so you won’t mind.
Where god kissed you hard on the mouth
and opened the holes in your jeans
made them big with red scissors.
Where god is an olive you won't — you would not ever — swallow. Too scared that the pit
will fall into your throat.
Where god eats the future out of a box for take-out and god eats the future out of a box for keeping thimbles and god eats the future out of a music box where god
throws you hard across the pool but god is now only playing a game. Your neck bent to one side
crooked like a hook. Where god saw him take her
to the back room of a store where a man said there would be a job for her and there was never any job for her. God watched
him close the door and god did not say stop god did not break the lock or call for any kind of help god did not smooth her hair back with soft knuckles when she cried god did not explain how this is what happened
this is the name for it
this is what you do now
this is the sheet to peer past
and to breathe under when you need to be somewhere
nice and just for one moment in the light. God says
do you mind. God says I saw you at the park. You were crying
with a woman
who was once a girl
taken badly to the back room
of a store. Did you happen, then, to see my dog run
scared by that tree with some leaves on his head?
His little god-paw. God says
will you help me make this poster. I god-lost someone. I’m sad. I cannot tell the green from red.
Glass: A Journal of Poetry is published monthly by Glass Poetry Press.
All contents © the author.
All contents © the author.
