ISSN: 1941-4137
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
Justin Rogers is a Black poet, educator, coach, and editor from Detroit, Michigan. Rogers is an advocate for literacy among inner-city youth, and the amplification of Black voices. With InsideOut Literary Arts, Rogers coordinates after school intensive-creative-writing programing and coaches youth teams at regional and national competition. His work is published or forthcoming in Tinderbox, Mobius Magazine, Apiary Magazine, 3 Elements Review, Skip-Fiction, Gramma Press and Public Pool. Rogers is the winner of the inaugural Chapbook Contest at Black Napkin Press for his manuscript Black, Matilda, which is forthcoming from Glass Poetry Press. With literary magazines, Rogers is content editor and webmaster with Wusgood Magazine, Editor in Cheif with youth focused journal Underscore Review, and a Poetry Reader with both Driving Range Review and 3 Elements Review.
Naming Me
My mother mentioned wanting to
name me something that sounded
like my father, but not a Jr.
Justin is the sound of my father
sifted onto a birth certificate that
he dies before he gets to sign
‘Geno’ has become so powder I
barely remember he was once whole man
How I 'Look just like him'
is a conversation about a phantom
that precedes me but who haunts my house
anyways There is no memory to rebuild him of
No picture of him begging my mind to
mold a false memory No voice
I’ve known to echo it’s sons
I know nothing of a father of a Geno
of mourning I don’t know how to
grieve something i never gained
but was made to sound like My mother
mentioned wanting to name me something that
sounded like Geno
or
maybe my mother doesn’t know how to grieve
either, and Justin is the closest
she can get.
I wrote this poem while taking the time to reflect on the origins of my name. I could recall my mother telling me she “wanted to name me something that / sounded like Geno” … and I remember not understanding why this was relevant to her. This piece goes back to that moment as a child where I had yet to understand the magnitude of my father’s death; how it changed more lives than my own. My father passed before I was ever born, so I will never know the mourning my mother experienced, but I do know that she was strong enough to keep me while loosing him. This poem is me beginning to understand that I have a world of things left to understand.
Glass: A Journal of Poetry is published monthly by Glass Poetry Press.
All contents © the author.
All contents © the author.
