ISSN: 1941-4137
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
Deon Robinson is an Afro-Latino poet born and raised in Bronx, New York. He is an undergraduate at Susquehanna University, where he was the two-time recipient of the Janet C. Weis Prize for Literary Excellence. His work has appeared in Homology Lit, Honey and Lime Lit, Kissing Dynamite Poetry, Occulum Journal, Okay Donkey and the Shade Journal, among others. His work was also nominated for the Best of the Net Anthology in 2019.
Also by Deon Robinson:
Two Poems
a monochrome boyhood
A Lunar Vernacular Attained From A Beach At Midnight
Previously in Glass: A Journal of Poetry:
The Virology that comes with these open caskets
A stampede of men’s hands
Raise your hand if a boy ever hit you to make a point —
replaced language for a less significant kind of swelling.
You, as always, possessed a timid vow mouth — foul by nature
but silent out of habit. Cowardice chases all of us into the next life.
Static reincarnates like a eulogy if you let it, is it too late to say
his grin was as curved as a slur? His eyes were the Gold Rush
men pried into each other’s chest cavity for. What good
is remembering his hands if you can only curse
in this singular language? I want to talk about the past
without feeling like I left my favorite body hanging in his closet.
Can I still call myself a wolf if I possessed sight and still held
my tongue when the moon called my name? No. The answer is no.
That is the answer to a question I remember him asking —
then forgetting he needed an answer to. Raise your arm
if a boy ever hit you to make a point.
Doesn’t a raised hand without context resemble a salute?
I say this of course, because he is saluted member of
my country’s military. I say this now because there exists
no kingdom you can dream of that someone hasn’t died in, or for.
There will come a time when the wind beckons the chime
and in return receives a song that cracks the mountain’s skull.
Where a boy falls headfirst into a bedroom and walks out
woundless, the way his mother wanted.
Raise your hand if a boy ever hit you to make a point —
Now: is that the arm he bruised?
Glass: A Journal of Poetry is published monthly by Glass Poetry Press.
All contents © the author.
All contents © the author.
