ISSN: 1941-4137
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
Jacqueline Boucher lives and writes in Kansas, where she serves as poetry editor for Lammergeier Magazine. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in New South, Occulum, SmokeLong Quarterly, Hobart, and other magazines. Her life’s ambitions are to write a book-length love letter to Hannibal Lecter and to convince her cats to pay rent.
in praise
This is not an elegy
for the girl I buried
in September,
though I love her still.
The Lake is a mother
who called her away
in rush and riptide,
adorned her
skeleton in hermit crabs.
Today, I am made
of stronger stuff. Today,
my chitin is the stuff
of ball joint, these eyes
a compound marvel.
I will never not see
him coming again.
In this way, hope
is a clicking mandible,
an iridescence
of wings.
For the past two years, my work has focused heavily on the process of recovery from a recent sexual trauma. Every piece has been, in some way, a negotiation with that particular violence, from the stutter-step process of remembering; to the rage that accompanied the recovery process; and, as with “in praise,” to both the burial of the woman I was before that day and the hope for remaking myself in a stronger, more vigilant image. I’m fascinated with bugs and other exoskeletal creatures; I think there’s something very lovely about the fact that all of their protection from predation exists on the outside rather than the inside. Part of me is also very drawn to the revulsion that people feel in looking at a beetle. Something about that feels very safe. Even as I continue the process of recovery, remaking, and renegotiation, I look forward to a world where I’m glittery, unsightly, and have eyes in all directions. That… that’s the dream.
Glass: A Journal of Poetry is published monthly by Glass Poetry Press.
All contents © the author.
All contents © the author.
