ISSN: 1941-4137
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
Brittny Ray Crowell is a native of Texarkana, TX with a BA in English from Spelman College and an MA in English from Texas A&M-Texarkana. She recently was awarded the Inprint Donald Barthelme Prize in Poetry and her work has been published or forthcoming in The West Review, and the anthology Black Lives Have Always Mattered. She is currently a PhD candidate in Creative Writing and Literature at the University of Houston.
Poets Resist
Edited by Sandra L. Faulkner
June 10, 2020
Edited by Sandra L. Faulkner
June 10, 2020
Universal Grammar
yes, children, it does mean empty, too
and I wish I could take back
what I taught you before
that we could just once escape
the clutches of context whole
the opaque membrane before our eyes
unbroken
unscathed
[de•so•late]: adj
1.devoid: like your grandmother’s house
after the brother you loved
hurled
his father’s body to the ground like a palm’s worth
of salt thrust upon
the earth
2. deserted: save for the haints wafting over their graves
no one ever expected to have to visit so soon
3. ravaged: sometimes it just seems to appear
so benignly, the innocuous exposure of evil slowly emerging
from bas-relief, like the hidden punctures of a garment
pulled from the closet moth eaten and decimated
it means that
there are holes here now
barren
bereft of space
presences never to be fixed
only missed
desolate—
may you never come to know
its meaning
to see it face to face
like an unrequited gaze down a casket
may its cavern never hover upon your head
may you never find yourself
abruptly climbing from it
black hole
anti-halo
stony
sunken
well
Poets Resist is published by Glass Poetry Press.
All contents © the author.
All contents © the author.
