ISSN: 1941-4137
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
Jennifer Wortman is the author of the story collection This. This. This. Is. Love. Love. Love. (Split/Lip Press, 2019) and a National Endowment of the Arts fellow. Her fiction, essays, and poetry appear in TriQuarterly, Copper Nickel, Glimmer Train, Normal School, Electric Literature, Brevity, Juked, and elsewhere. An Ohio native, she lives with her family in Colorado, where she teaches at Lighthouse Writers Workshop and serves as associate fiction editor for Colorado Review.
Better Living
So many techniques for living
better. Breathe in and out,
six counts each. Somebody liked
my imperfect teeth. I told him
don’t like them. I’m supposed to
say thank you. If I breathe
right, my pain will walk
away. If I speak correctly,
my pain will vacation
and die while drinking
Chianti. I always want
to tear myself out
of myself. I always want
instructions and ignore all
instructions. For instance,
I told myself not to talk
to you in this poem.
I told myself not to
blame you for everything.
You made me breathe
wrong. I want to breathe
the way people say.
I want to speak
the way people breathe.
I want my pain
to vacation in your perfect
red teeth. I hate “myself,”
embarrassing lie, as if
I belong to me.
I’m deeply ambivalent about self-help literature. On one hand, sometimes I need help. On the other, self-help typically relies on a notion of the self as rational, volitional, and autonomous, which is so often not the case. A similar tension, for me, lies in the creative impulse, the destructiveness that can shadow its lauded utilities. This poem tries to address the sides of self-help and creativity that aren’t so neatly redemptive.
Glass: A Journal of Poetry is published monthly by Glass Poetry Press.
All contents © the author.
All contents © the author.
