ISSN: 1941-4137
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
Dion O'Reilly's prize-winning debut book, Ghost Dogs, was published in February 2020 by Terrapin Books. Her poems appear in Cincinnati Review, Poetry Daily, Narrative, The New Ohio Review, The Massachusetts Review, New Letters, Journal of American Poetry, Rattle, The Sun, and other literary journals and anthologies. She is a member of The Hive Poetry Collective, which produces podcasts and radio shows, and she leads online workshops with poets from all over the United States and Canada.
Hunt
Once my boyfriend slapped my son.
I didn’t leave him
till he stole my money,
bought gold bullion
and a cache of guns.
My next lover was soft spoken,
loved to pick calluses
off my big toe. Scratch
my widow’s peak till I shivered
like the tail of an unfixed cat.
Have you ever wanted to kiss a stranger
as he picks up your fallen tomatoes?
The sight of his nape, his shape
beneath a clean corduroy shirt
and my wet collar bones seek a tongue.
My camisole lifts itself
to show my tiny breasts, like babies,
hungry for their own nipples.
Can you tell I’m lying?
I don’t pounce. I’m no panther.
I circle the blue
with the patience of a vulture.
Wait to enter the open belly of my want,
wait for the lucifer bird
his purple gorget, his hornet buzz.
his hunt for the flower’s red lip.
Even with my stainless hips,
my white roots, leached to the tips,
I chant the failed prayer of every new love —
the taste of a dark coin
pressed beneath my tongue.
"Hunt," was written from a list of words and phrases I pulled from my list in response to a prompt I'd given myself. The prompt was the final line of a sonnet I'd written called "After the Final Skin Graft," published in Narrative about my experiences as a burn survivor. The final line of the poem is… "the world I would reenter like a wind-drift seed." When I asked myself what was it like to re-enter the world after being burned, strangely, words and phrases of sexual need answered the question, so I strung them together, and, four drafts later, the poem was born. Not what I expected! I usually go through about forty drafts, and I'd planned on writing a crown of sonnets about something completely different.
Glass: A Journal of Poetry is published quarterly by Glass Poetry Press.
All contents © the author.
All contents © the author.
