ISSN: 1941-4137
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
Kristina Bicher is a poet, essayist, and translator living in New York City. Her work has appeared in Ploughshares, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Plume, Denver Quarterly, Barrow Street, Narrative, Painted Bride Quarterly, The Atlantic, The Harvard Review and others. Her collection She-Giant in the Land of Here-We-Go Again (MadHat Press) is due out in the fall of 2019 . She holds an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College.
Isa's Mannequins
we with no openings then nothing
leaves our body then only
there’s a ringing in this skin
what rises of me
falls back down in my feet
how heavylight, emptyfull i
who cannot send a letter
cannot fall on knees
who moved cannot tremble
and therefore my hands coatrack
receive to receive therefore giant bowl
therefore furniture
with your hoof hand please
stroke my blue wig
[chink] my shell
if i sing, how song pools
into hollow legs like sadness where
are my genitals
my finger gone missing
hair doesn’t fit
my shirt
there is no hearing in this
i am other, fetish
A few years back, I wandered into David Zwirner’s garage-like gallery in Chelsea to see an installation by German artist Isa Genzken. Here, in a large, white-washed concrete room under fluorescent skies, was a mini-scape of mannequins attempting mimesis. In ill-fitting clothes and awkward postures, they stared past one another. I stood there amidst these creatures so full of anomie and longing. Though silent, there was a palpable sense of attempted communication winging between them, fragmented and sad. Each was trapped in the shell of the self. The scene was pure artifice yet their humanity was unmistakable.
Glass: A Journal of Poetry is published monthly by Glass Poetry Press.
All contents © the author.
All contents © the author.
