ISSN: 1941-4137
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
Joanna Cleary is an undergraduate student double majoring in English Literature and Theatre and Performance at the University of Waterloo. Her work has previously appeared or is forthcoming in The /tƐmz/ Review, Pulp Poets Press, The Hunger, Shot Glass Journal, Every Pigeon, Riggwelter, and Subterranean Blue Poetry, among others. She is also currently a Blog Editor for Inklette Magazine.
After Pride
after pride, i bussed home and lay in my parents’ backyard. and thought about how it had been endless. the protestors: small and unimportant. i was important. i was there. i was an opaque and igneous lump. i: the greed of the vowel, the false innocence of the sky. it has seen stones as we have been stoned to death. it didn’t rain this year like it did last year when i snuck home. with my skin already washed clean before i stepped. through the door. from my skin bled the rain. i said i had gone to see two back-to-back movies. the sunlight today touched me just like. i wanted it to and still does as i remain here lying. with the grass blades against my arms like obscure lovers. i have never been in love. the sunlight, its warmth. rippling against my light-ached flesh. what i was proud of.
The first time I went to my hometown’s Dyke March, it drizzled and then poured. I marched amidst the throng of people gathered for various interconnected reasons — to celebrate queerness and womanhood, to empower the female body, to escape, to flirt, to lose things, to find things — and waved my miniature Pride flag with vigor. I considered how, as well as celebrating, we were all mourning having to return to an often sexist and homophobic society when the parade ended. As this poem shifted from capturing an autobiographical experience to delving into the mindset of a more abstract persona, I found myself expanding to focus on the general concept of LGBT+ Pride and the interconnected nature of shame and pride.
Glass: A Journal of Poetry is published monthly by Glass Poetry Press.
All contents © the author.
All contents © the author.
