ISSN: 1941-4137
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
Leah Umansky is the author of two full length collections, The Barbarous Century (2018), and Domestic Uncertainties (2013), among others. She earned her MFA in Poetry at Sarah Lawrence College and is the curator and host of The COUPLET Reading Series in NYC. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in such places as Poetry, Guernica, Bennington Review, The Academy of American Poets' Poem-A-Day, Poetry International, The New York Times, Rhino, and Pleiades. She is resisting the tyrant with her every move. She is #teamstark #teamelliot & #teambernard.
Also by Leah Umansky:
The Barbarous Century.
I threw in an extra fuck
Desire [even in the age of the tyrant]
Previously in Glass: A Journal of Poetry:
Millions of Perfect Crimes are Committed Every Day By No One
Stranger Is
Alternate Ending of the Tyrant
In an alternate of King Lear, written after Shakespeare’s death, Cordelia dies in her father’s arms and then Lear is hanged. No rights are wronged; no savior is found. Wrong begets wrong. Betrayal begets betrayal. In an alternate ending of this life, the tyrant falls in a swift, a swoop, in a spoon’s width away from comedy. In this ending, the tyrant gradually falls to pieces; circuits fail, edges crack, and hinges bust; the tyrant frails, his hands are already taken; in one hand lies all the evil deeds and in the other, all the cries of the people. All the Americans; all of those people he tried to separate, nullify, procure; all of those beautiful people he mined against one another, who he propped up with his puppetry and from whom he mystified the truth, those are the ones leading the fray. Lie by lie, layer by layer, the tyrant falls to the earth, and there is no burial song, no choir leading the audience in prayer; death is death. It is a certainty — we all die — and here, the tyrant is without his hands, and here, he is now without his tongue, without his voice, and without his hearing; he falls and falls and falls; no one pities him and no one cries. In this alternate ending, the need to feel fades; victory triumphs, freedom triumphs, peace triumphs, love triumphs; in this alternate ending, his ashes become a stone and the stone is buried in the dirt, captured in the dank and the dark and in the damp of eternity. The tyrant is just that, a pebble beneath the surface; one we know is always there, always there, always
This is the newest of my tyrant poems and I'm thrilled it found a home at Glass, a journal I deeply admire. Ironically, it's not the only one that alludes to King Lear, or the toxicity of men. Of course, I want the tyrant to fall, as the poem states, but the reality is hatred thrives on hatred and greed lives off its vanity and its desire. I don't know what will happen to the tyrant, just like I don't know what will happen to us, to our humanity, or to our freedom. Of course, the tyrant here is mostly the one in the White House, but he could be any of the many tyrants in our lives. How could we know what will happen? He could stay in power. He could continue to spread hatred and lies and chaos, but in this ending, this alternate ending to his crusade, he loses his grip and his fall brings about his undoing. He crumbles into the ground, a mere pebble, but we will continue to feel him, always. History always repeats itself, and so does any art, or any story. This tyrant is nothing new. Look at what Shakespeare was highlighting about men, all those centuries ago. Time doesn't change things. People do. Ideas do. Actions do.
Glass: A Journal of Poetry is published monthly by Glass Poetry Press.
All contents © the author.
All contents © the author.
