ISSN: 1941-4137
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
Annie Christain is an associate professor of composition and ESOL at SUNY Cobleskill and a former artist resident of the Shanghai Swatch Art Peace Hotel and the Arctic Circle Art and Science Expedition. Her poems have appeared in Seneca Review, Oxford Poetry, The Chariton Review, and The Lifted Brow, among others. She received the grand prize of the Hart Crane Memorial Poetry Contest, the Greg Grummer Poetry Award, the Oakland School of the Arts Enizagam Poetry Award, and the Neil Shepard Prize in Poetry. Tall As You Are Tall Between Them, her debut poetry book, was published in fall 2016 by C&R Press.
Ghostbusters (2016), Having Never Watched the Film
"Wait — did Venkman just HAPPEN to have 300ccs of Thorazine on him when he went on his date with Dana? What was he planning?"
— Patton Oswalt
Key (NEW)
All colors exist on a spectrum from (red) base desires to (violet) heightened awareness/intellect. Where she looks lets the beings know what their food is going to taste like.
The beasts switch on the day’s carrier pigeon, place the key from his beak into her palm, and say she can rip open an auric envelop to have growing space. Then they add, “So how would you go about achieving that with only a key?” They stand her up next to them with forced flow, idealized beams of similarity and text her, “Same,”
verified by the 23andMe results they hand to her: genetic lycanthropy. With 300ccs of Thorazine ready to go, she says, “I’m a friend of his; he told me to meet him here.”1
Synonyms — crucial, down-home lust
Does she think it’s her job to make the first move or does she let someone with a high heat output pile it on? She tells herself, “Stop the eternal attributes,” so they’ll hear it. If she erases her whole personal history, she might find someone who admires her enough to lineate their organs for her in private, off-script. They’ll say they’re hungry then thank her, and she’ll wonder what really happened.
She ultimately allows or denies entry into the cylinder. If she didn’t, why would they try so hard to act like they do, even introducing her to the concept so the pin and tumbler arrangement might manifest correctly from her for them to reverse engineer? Nothing she does is any of their business, but it’s not just about privacy. It’s about holding onto the keys of death and Hades long enough for her to know she has them.
She is much more than a locksmith.2
Related — There is no key unless she is the key
1 Venkman’s response to Dana’s/Zul’s question: “Are you the keymaster?”
2 Zuhal means Saturn
Glass: A Journal of Poetry is published monthly by Glass Poetry Press.
All contents © the author.
All contents © the author.
