ISSN: 1941-4137
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
Gaetan Sgro lives in the rust belt where he practices medicine, writes poetry, and roughhouses with his daughters. His poems have appeared in the Bellevue Literary Review, Blueline, Best New Poets 2016 and other fine publications.
Also by Gaetan Sgro:
Every Night We Talk About The Same Thing
How to Wrestle Loneliness (and Win)
Poets Resist
Edited by Logan February
July 30, 2019
Edited by Logan February
July 30, 2019
The Word
The word is instinct is id is fight or flight but preferably fight is locked jaw and reptilian brain The word is stand your ground is never sorry is shoot first and don’t question The word is fever dream is facts like fleas vision blurred and palms sweating The word is not spoken but hissed is white teeth white hair white veins bulging The word bypasses heart plunging straight into the gut’s dark cavity The word is darkness not gut so much as gutting The word is made flesh and renders flesh ripe for battering The word is violence sanctioned sanctified because those bodies are just bodies are just bodies The word is red meat merciless brutish animal for which the only answer is cage The word is cage not hollow not contained but contagious embodied teeming
When news and images of the wretched conditions in U.S. border detention centers broke, I thought immediately of the dehumanizing language used to describe the people now in captivity. Tracing a line from words like “rapists” and “animals” to the embodiment of such rhetoric in chain link and physical violence resonated darkly with John 1:14 “And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us.”
Poets Resist is published by Glass Poetry Press.
All contents © the author.
All contents © the author.
