ISSN: 1941-4137
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
Megan Neville is a writer and educator based in Cleveland, Ohio. She is the author of the chapbook Rust Belt Love Song (Game Over Books, 2019), and her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The American Academy of Poets (Poets.org), Cherry Tree, Cream City Review, Longleaf Review, and elsewhere. She is a poetry reader for Split Lip Magazine and was a finalist in Write Bloody’s 2019 book contest.
Our Lady Of The Safe Word
remember this
rope burn on your wrists is negotiable:
last time you thought yourself escapeless
you fashioned a knife from your
own shinbone & when it proved too
blunt you slashed a hatch in the plaster
with your tongue & all he saw
was the back of you,
getting smaller.
One of the features of my full-length manuscript is a series of short, deceptively straightforward "Our Lady of…" poems interspersed throughout the other poems to tie them together thematically. This is one of them. I think it speaks for itself: so many people are in unhealthy situations with awful people they feel somehow bound to, but we can use what we have within us to get out and run away triumphantly — even if it takes multiple tries. Craft-wise I played around a lot with how sounds and line breaks affected meaning in various drafts of this poem, and I’m glad I did because I’m happy with how it ultimately turned out.
Glass: A Journal of Poetry is published monthly by Glass Poetry Press.
All contents © the author.
All contents © the author.
