ISSN: 1941-4137
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
Khalypso is a Sacramento-based activist, actor, and poet. They are fat, black, neurodivergent, queer, and an agender badass. Their work can be found in Francis House, Rigorous Journal, Blood Orange Review, and Shade Journal, as well as a few others. Their chapbook, The Hottentot Lights The Gas Herself, was a runner up for the Two Sylvias Chapbook Prize. They are the 2019 Sacramento Youth Poet Laureate, a Leo-Virgo cusp, and in need of more friends.
Previously in Glass: A Journal of Poetry:
What I Am Hoping My Children Look Like
Black & Shining & Tired
“Every n*gger is a star.”
— Boris Gardiner
i fear water the same way i imagine my ancestors did; tongue-tied
& hope-filled that the miserly depth holds life
where the distance between freedom & here fails.
i say the lost names nestled beside the mourning sun & a sky shatters,
blood running rampant down its thighs like
a beckon for birth or a reckoning
for a redneck. a bullet. a cardinal. a slice of sweet meat.
i’ve learned to catch what taunts the hate in my mouth
& crush it like the stained rapture of a blackberry’s popping.
there is absence everywhere, even between the tongue & teeth.
when i say i cannot love i mean i do not know my family’s history.
how one hand guided the next to its mettle. how a body fell into its terror
and bloomed a protest. on the night a father evacuated his veins
in my city, my trembling fingers stood still. the air staled
& tangled into carcinogen. there was nowhere to look
but up.
Glass: A Journal of Poetry is published monthly by Glass Poetry Press.
All contents © the author.
All contents © the author.
