ISSN: 1941-4137
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
Gardner Dorton is a poet living in Charleston, South Carolina with an MFA in Poetry from the College of Charleston. His poems have been published in After the Pause, South 85, Homology Lit and Rattle.
Also by Gardner Dorton:
Mearcstapa
Litany of Summertime Forgetfulness
Inside the Steeple
1.
Already at the age of seven
I heard a lie.
I was building steeples, to celebrate,
the marriage of my Batman and Robin.
They married. They kissed. My brother
weighed boulders over my shoulder
and crushed my oasis. I remember. He said
It’s not real, that’s fictional.
2.
Before then, a man. A grandfather.
Before then, a man became a bludgeon
that was hell-bent on teaching Gomorrah. Said,
God said so. Said, feel my fearing. Said,
here is the way a body swells.
He held my brother by the neck. Which one?
Your eye, your right eye will remember.
Your right eye will feel the phantom monuments
of stones before you cross a river. It will
remember God walked here first. Open
your mouth if it’s screaming. Open.
Don’t tell your parents had two meanings.
3.
I know you, lover, I know
you are nonfiction. Somewhere. You are
complex carbon. You are a body in wait.
A body equal, even if I don’t know
the weight of you yet. I know the wait is weighing
a cathedral’s worth. I am crystal-heavy
with anticipation. I am failed in my guessing.
A name — what is yours?
I turn my shoulder and look back.
I turn to salt.
4.
Dear. I interrogate the plausibility.
Dear, are you still real?
I’ve waited the length it takes
for a person to collapse in holding
their breath. Dear, will you bruise
me also? The last man who knew me
called me a faggot when he came. Dear,
are you tender? Dear —
5.
When I know you, when I know
the edges of your name, will I
also know a torso ripe enough
to touch? Can we then
walk around those
picketing our way to heaven?
This poem was one that was difficult to write, and is currently on its 73rd draft. It’s a combination of trauma and hope. I kept coming back to it, even though it looks nothing like the original, I knew it had something important to say. Now it serves as a bit of a mantra, to acknowledge the past, but to look and believe in something better. I was diagnosed with bipolar when writing this poem, and it amplified all the past sadness, but this poem is working to take that and move on. This poem is a reminder that there is something, even someone, to look forward to.
Glass: A Journal of Poetry is published monthly by Glass Poetry Press.
All contents © the author.
All contents © the author.
