ISSN: 1941-4137
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
Thanh Bui was born in Saigon and raised in Boston and Houston. Her work has appeared in The Sunlight Press, FIVE:2:ONE, and FreezeRay Poetry. She is a metal bender.
Also by Thanh Bui:
Split, in 4 Parts and Overcompensive pt. II
Sad things / I don’t know / who to share with
Four Micropoems
carnival dream
instead of laughing
clowns and balloon
animals, the 10:30
comic makes a joke
about hiding valuables
from the hands that fold
towel animals, and my guilt
quick-flips to rage. in a less
lucky life, i could be a smiling blue
uniform moored to this ship, too,
but in this one i simply match skin
tones with the waiter from Manila.
the pink man next to me laughs
too hard at this, so i stay still as
steal; they must not know
we move among them.
in the morning, i watch them
watch me laugh so loudly
i almost seem lifelike. like in
that moment, it was possible
we all sought freedom
out at sea. it just
depends on who’s
laughing hardest.
in our
staterooms,
the towel elephants
have tiny paper eyes.
Growing up, my mom, brother, and I never ate out but saved up money instead to tag along with my (much wealthier) uncle’s family whenever they went on vacation and that was how we got to sometimes experience this strange other life we’d otherwise never known about. It was during one of these family trips that I found myself in the awful position of being served by people I identified with, where the lines of power and privilege were very clear and the space between me and my server was at once gaping and non-existent. It felt a little like stumbling onto a world I was never supposed to enter, like I had discovered a rich people secret, and that secret looked like me singing and dancing with napkins for them at dinnertime.
I’m unsure if my uncle’s family felt similarly, but I know that in some way our presence there on that giant steel ship distorted everyone’s illusion of who holds the power, who belongs where, who gets to be waited on and by whom. While that trip felt like constantly looking down and realizing I was in disguise, masquerading as a class of people I wasn’t a part of, it was also undeniably evident that even if only temporarily, I still had a seat at the table. There’s something about that feeling — being a sheep in wolves’ clothing — that lies at the heart of my relationship with race and class, and it’s not anything I have enough tools to fully navigate yet.
Glass: A Journal of Poetry is published monthly by Glass Poetry Press.
All contents © the author.
All contents © the author.
