ISSN: 1941-4137
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
Rachel Mennies is the author of The Naomi Letters, forthcoming in 2021 from BOA Editions, and The Glad Hand of God Points Backwards, winner of the 2014 Walt McDonald First-Book Prize in Poetry at Texas Tech University Press and finalist for a National Jewish Book Award. Her poetry and nonfiction have appeared at American Poetry Review, Kenyon Review, The Millions, The Poetry Foundation, The Believer, and elsewhere. In 2016, Mennies was named the series editor for the Walt McDonald First-Book Prize in Poetry; she also serves as AGNI's reviews editor.
Also by Rachel Mennies:
The Glad Hand of God Points Backwards
No Silence in the Fields
August 7, 2016
February 26, 2017
Naomi, I woke this morning thinking about my friend 
, who lives in South Dakota.
, who lives in South Dakota.How she told me weeks later, when I asked her why didn’t you come to see me, why didn’t you tell me, I would have come with you that she picked the closest clinic she could find, even if it meant going alone.
I think of those hours drove by herself in the dark.
drove by herself in the dark. awake in the nearest motel during the two-day waiting period—flicking through the channels, watching the network fuzz.I think of the abortion I watched on a Netflix drama last night: nineteenth century London, the nurse warming a thin hooked wire between her hands.
How the other nurse, in lieu of anesthesia, whispered God forgives all to the woman screaming in the bed.
I think of my mother’s stories from the clinic where she worked in Wilmington, the man whose spit she rinsed from her black hair before her shift.
How the guards walked her to her car once each day ended.
On each flight I take, there is a moment before the plane leaves the gate where I think this is your last chance to disembark.
You are still in the city in which your body awoke.
Do you wish to stay, Rachel? Do you wish to leave?
This morning I remembered the plane had departed without us, Naomi.
We will awake again, tomorrow, in America.
Glass: A Journal of Poetry is published monthly by Glass Poetry Press.
All contents © the author.
All contents © the author.
