ISSN: 1941-4137
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
Marissa Coon Rose lives and works in the Rust Belt. Her work has recently appeared in Literary Mama, Flying Island, Likely Red Press, and Tuck Magazine. You might also catch her in upcoming issues of Riggwelter Press, Peculiar Journal, and Sou’wester Poetry Journal.
Walt Whitman
After it’s over, and I
come out, I walk
about my neighborhood and pretend
I am Walt Whitman:
I sing chain-store signs wrought with neon
on a fresh night,
and because I am him,
I already know the libretto of
queerness in America
in the age of Trump, America
of Trump, I know
the check-cashing joint with gilt lettering,
the wine and spirit bottles
made amnesic by paper bags,
the polystyrene cups of cola and cigarette butts
stuffed into their empty husks,
the aria that scales power lines
like granite flecks of pigeons against sky
the one where silence doesn’t settle, near
and everywhere
I sing the dappled hallowed preserve
of overgrown lots dotting the avenues,
whoosh of air brakes on the city bus,
Missionaries in their hosiery
on a boarded-up corner
where a bank used to be,
while my being reflects
itself in two mirrors —
cereal-bowl-stacked,
infinite in receding —
and I wonder,
singing my country, when will it ever
sing me back?
I am Walt Whitman.
My face is an open smile.
I take the harmony.
I am often caught between the tension of what it means to embrace my roots as a citizen of the Rust Belt with what it means to be an LGBTQ person. The two identities are not, as the media might believe, mutually exclusive, but the Rust Belt is a complicated place and my struggle with identity occasionally reflects that. I wanted to write a poem that captured that experience while also honoring Walt Whitman, who seemed to be able to merge identity of place and identity of person seamlessly when he wrote.
Glass: A Journal of Poetry is published monthly by Glass Poetry Press.
All contents © the author.
All contents © the author.
