ISSN: 1941-4137
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
Phoebe Rusch’s poems have previously been given homes in Hobart and Lambda Literary poetry spotlight, among other places. They have an MFA in fiction from the University of Michigan.
Also by Phoebe Rusch:
Stereotype Threat
Do you feel like you were born in the wrong body?
Two In One Flesh
Heterosexuality
They say that the world was built for two / only worth living if somebody is loving you
— Lana Del Rey
Once I had long flaxen hair
and a dress with a lace bodice
and a peter-pan collar studded
with faux-pearl buttons.
I had a man who fucked me
against the headboard of his childhood
bed and told me I was sexy and told me
the Coen brothers were geniuses
and I watched him play video games
and I yelled at him for not loving me
enough, or not loving me
in the way I wanted him to, when I drank.
His parents took us out to dinner, treated me
like a daughter. We ate many rolls
with butter, drank good wine and talked politics.
I thought one day we might live
in a house like theirs, stately, rosebushes
in the backyard and whole rooms full
of books. I thought one day we might
live in a love like theirs, frayed
but preserved in gilt-framed photographs and always
throwing dinner parties. Maybe we loved
each other; I remember thinking
I loved him when we lay all day in bed
listening to the cicadas chant outside.
Yes, we did love, as I recall,
loved and chafed each other sore.
He would pick me up
in his parents’ car, whistling
my name. Once, I remember,
once in the dark he told me
he could feel how lovely I was without ever
seeing me. Once, in the dark, to me,
before I ever
saw him, he was a shape,
a form. Once, I remember once being another
and sometimes when
I sing I hear her voice like a descant, thunder
clap echoing above my baritone, voice two-throated
like a train passing
long gone and how sad
that she did not covet her own
company all those long golden
and leaf-thick afternoons.
Glass: A Journal of Poetry is published monthly by Glass Poetry Press.
All contents © the author.
All contents © the author.
