ISSN: 1941-4137
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
Claire Christoff is an MFA candidate in poetry at the University of Illinois. Her work has appeared in Passages North, Grist, and the minnesota review.
Also by Claire Christoff:
health and nutrition for the modern girl
Sullen Girl
Cowardice Before the Flight of Time
Simone Weil never brushed her hair and neither do I.
I rake my fingers through a rat’s nest of bangs, lick
my dry lips, but spit only makes the bleeding worse.
When I hide my raw knuckles in mittens, like a child,
rasps of wool catch where skin used to be. Some
mothering voice in my head says Take better care
of yourself, which is easy when I don’t take care
of myself at all. I bought four yogurts and three of them
were expired so I sat in the supermarket parking lot,
waiting for a crow to come and soil my windshield
or maybe partake of my curdled bounty. Simone Weil
didn’t care about sex or hygiene and she did not want
to eat, but perhaps if I had known her — if our lifetimes
had lined up just a little — this would have been
different. We could have read the complete works
of Schopenhauer and washed the bird shit from
our mittens, poured heavy cream into saucers
and lapped like kittens while the peasants in France
ate only whey. Comb your hair, my red virgin,
my little Bolshevik. Take better care of yourself.
Glass: A Journal of Poetry is published monthly by Glass Poetry Press.
All contents © the author.
All contents © the author.
