Daughter
My mother
buried her child
that she brought
to the temple
and there
I find myself,
though I am
wholly glass.
Poems on the topic: glass
Poems on the topic “glass” on Poets.by.
White fragility
I ready myself for
a ride in rough conditions
with a chest of glass,
my hand leased
from a pretty lady
and a paper head so full of sin
I begin to see God.
Tip for travelers
Things I use
in a glass country:
lips for business
and rice for a bed.
At sunset
packing up glass
to send into the country—
an amber evening
Existential museuming
a blown-glass sculpture
of the HIV virus—
loud children swarm past
Counting warblers
Hooded, worm-eating,
cerulean, black-throated green.
I tick off the names
like prayer beads,
and later, when a black snake
rears up like an instant tree,
I remember all
the deadly false Edens,
the acres of glass.
Fulgurite
Lightning roots deep into the sand,
donning an instant sheath of glass:
a seemingly pointless exercise in self-glove.
Clap of thunder.
Could it be, though, that radiance tires of itself?
Nowhere in the alleged blackness of space
is there any relief from the ticking,
pulsing, clusterfucks of stars
except on cold planets.
Who can blame lightning
for burrowing in like a tick?
Even we humans, full of darkness as we are,
go on pilgrimage to the ocean,
dream of girls with gills,
get buried up to our necks in sand
or swim with porpoises, whose
Stone
The stone isn’t dull;
it’s just too shy to shine.
The stone isn’t still;
it’s just practicing an extreme economy of gesture.
The stone isn’t mute;
it’s just making up its mind how to begin.
When I lived in a glass house
it was my most honored guest.
Beach Glass
Among the cobbles of a shingle beach,
one thumb-sized stone draws
your beachcomber’s eye, too pure a blue
to be granite, opaque but somehow
promising translucence.
A wave clatters up & wets
your ankles. You grab for the stone,
now glistening—clearly glass
& once a shard, despite the loss
of all sharp edges &
its transformation from fragment
to a whole small world.
It has turned & turned in the bay’s
watery gullet, that precipitous gizzard
full of ersatz teeth.
What smaller, softer things
Useless
i spent hours sweeping last night
but my bare feet are still being cut by glass
hidden under the stove
and the peeling tile
and the kitchen table
and the dark corners of the fridge
and the carpet two rooms away
i guess i really can't do anything right
4,015 Days Down
i am still waiting for the day
when my sorry will stop sounding like
the whoosh of air before her sharp slap
the choked cry of my siblings
the shattering of glass
and my pleas for mercy.
i am tired of being a victim
but it's all i've ever known.
The Window
It's almost like torture
A feeling that I can't escape
And it's only getting harder
Have I really made a mistake?
Staring through the window
Drooling at the pretty toy I see
But I just don't have the money
I have to have it, it has to be for me!
And yet I see someone else
Through the glass with a gleam in their eyes
I refuse to let them have it
They can't take what is mine!
And as I pound on the glass
Oblivious to my demands
They take the toy away from me
How dare they mock me so!
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