ISSN: 1941-4137
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
Irma K is a first-year college student from Vancouver, Canada. Her work has previously been recognized by the Ledbury Poetry Festival, the Orwell Foundation, and the UK Poetry Society.
Vancouver Postcard (Mother’s Day)
I am tired of unbuttoning the sea
for grandmothers who won’t visit. Here is
the gray beach, an oil tanker. Here is
Grouse Mountain, fat ridge. Today I vow
to stop sending
unopened pictures via
WhatsApp.
In this country’s southing tip I was born
without a name. Those first weeks out of the hospital
they called me Baba, meaning baby.
or Baba after Baba Yaga (witch)
or Babushka (grandmother)
Did I mother myself, flayed on woodchips
and black beach rocks? I the only animal
alive for miles and
Mama left alone to curl asleep.
Was that the mattering moment:
the homeland severed, Hungary falling in the forest
like a girl scout’s patch.
Always in a distant north men
and women sit together,
lapping ice and metal containers.
families flense in the snow, attuned
to animal carcasses.
In that endless groaning ice,
those same
black beach rocks look to sore mothers
like cresting seals,
cool and mum.
Glass: A Journal of Poetry is published quarterly by Glass Poetry Press.
All contents © the author.
All contents © the author.
