ISSN: 1941-4137
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
Shaina Phenix is a queer, Black femme poet, educator, and Virginia Tech MFA poetry candidate from Harlem, New York. Before pursuing her MFA, she taught middle and high school humanities for three years. She is — her work is — obsessed with and possessed by many sounds of black and femme existences, the passing down of stories, ocean, the body, mothering, acts of loving, and home(s). She has poems in Crooked Arrow Press, West Branch Wired, and is forthcoming in DIALOGIST and Puerto del Sol.
Also by Shaina Phenix:
Poets Resist
Edited by Sandra L. Faulkner
July 31, 2020
Edited by Sandra L. Faulkner
July 31, 2020
elegy with beta fish
In this tank, I am the entertainment, fine. I am round water with my mouth.
You ooh & ahh & tap tap from the insides of your hand skin — I glub glub
loud as Black grannies hallelujah in church service, flap my fins like the wind
against a wooly, greased, & spiraled scalp. In this tank, I am the entertainment,
fine. I swim in & out of holes like girl legs in double dutch cords. I leap
to the crown of my wet home for small pellets like floorboards under jays
at the function. & when I am fed, I burrough my cheeks in a set of rocks
beneath me & you ogle, so impressed by the way I bury my own self,
keep you grounded. The thing about capture & colonization is that at some point
the captured get free, get buck wild, & burn your shit down. When I get out
of this tank, wringle my shimmered & saturated meat from behind this glass,
your world becomes nothing but this tank, I promise. When I get out of this tank,
I’ll bring all my homies with me, we’ll bring all our wet with us & we’ll tap tap
& ooh ahh, entertain us! Burrough your cheeks between the rocks of this earth
you’ve looted, we’ll marvel at your neck hanging open like a pussy after birth,
demand you blow bubbles with your blood. Celebrate with flag-like fins,
gills ajar & breathe fine as you get empty, glub glub & demand you try & exist
like us. Erupt in glee at your tongue tying its way down your throat, dangle
our murdered cousins overhead — ask if you are hungry & when you rise panting,
gnawing, & nipping at their limp back fins — your ragged chin begging upward,
we’ll use the sharp of our mourning to split you like a gill stretched open.
Out of the tank, you are the entertainment, are the pet kept & tapped at.
Now beg for your life — fissured & gutted like a me, like my kin
all your red & blue water drained from your gullet.
Poets Resist is published by Glass Poetry Press.
All contents © the author.
All contents © the author.
