ISSN: 1941-4137
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
Christopher Sturdy (he/him) is a Minnesotan writer/educator living in Harlem and teaching high school English in The Bronx. When he's not teaching, he can be found attempting to keep plants alive or dribbling a soccer ball to see if he's still got it (whatever it is). His poetry can be found in Press Pause Press, The Penn Review, and Archetype: A Literary Journal.
August 12, 2026
Elegy wrapped in the bookends of an aubade
I woke this morning with blood caked on my teeth. Not all around.
Just the grooves near my gums. Red-lined rings like crowns caught
around ankles. I cracked my neck, a bowling ball rolling across bubble wrap
and used my massage gun on my shoulders to get the knots out. My dentist
says this is because I carry grief in my jaw. Says that my jaw, neck, and shoulders
are connected and somehow I have morphed the human body to house
shoulders next to molars, some primal defensive stance. Says that I should start
wearing a mouthguard while I sleep. So I listen. Pick one up at CVS. Boil it in water
and imprint my bite into rubber. I need this. I need this because although it will
take me another few months to admit it, more than my jaw is hurting.
You were the only person I’d ever heard say ground swell in a sentence.
Your love for Mark Jarman’s poetry, abundant. But today while bartending,
a man on an obvious first date spoke Ground Swell word for word over charcuterie
and Pinot Gris. He got to your favorite part — you write about the life that’s vividest —
and I turned my back to him because it didn’t feel right. He didn’t say it like you
our first night on the couch, all giddy and dorky and eager to be seen.
All that is to say, I spent the rest of my shift daydreaming into a universe
where we didn’t break up: in that universe, we were at a farmer’s market
collecting weekly supplies for all the recipes on our ever-growing dinner list.
I laugh when you take two bundles of asparagus and hold them atop
your pigtails like antennae before mashing together indecipherable noises,
like some track in a Transformers movie. Everyone is looking, but I don’t know
if it’s at us, and frankly, I don’t care. My eyes, too pooled with tears to function.
After my shift, I poured myself a beer and reheated some soup I made
yesterday. The chef smelled it from his office and asked if he could
try it. I watched as his cheeks flushed and pupils bloomed, just like mine
had when you first made me this soup. He asked me about it. I told him
it was your mom’s old recipe, and he praised it because it does belong
on a good menu. He gathered everyone around the soup: the sous chef
smoking in the alley, the dishwasher in back, the servers still guzzling a shifty.
They sipped and awed until barely any was left. The last person to try it —
new to staff, a teenager with a small business level TikTok following — slurped
the final spoonful, made a circle with their pointer finger and thumb: Good soup.
And I know I’m supposed to laugh. Everyone is laughing over that Adam Driver clip
on the internet where he’s sitting at a diner with Lena Dunham in Girls. But I can’t
laugh because I remember watching that scene when it aired. It’s a breakup scene.
It’s a messy, long overdue break up scene. And now I don’t have any soup left.
And I don’t wanna make more. And this teenager is waiting for me to laugh
at their TikTok joke, and I want to reverse time five minutes so I can be sitting
with this soup, this good soup, and when my boss decides to invite everyone
to try it, I’ll say no. And I’ll slurp this soup like my very own ASMR track
not made for TikTok in an attempt to try to make sense of our breakup
and my daydreams into other universes and why pieces of you
keep hovering around me like old men who read Mark Jarman in an attempt to get laid
or my molars bleeding my grief through the night, or good soup coating
my stomach with some semblance of a disappearing joy.
Tomorrow I will wake up, less blood caked on
my teeth thanks to my mouthguard. I’ll crack my neck, and be both
disappointed and delighted at how few pops it gives. I’ll use
my massage gun on my shoulders, but not nearly as long
as days prior. And I’ll write this poem in an attempt to map
my grief and write about the life that’s vividest. And my initial reaction
will be to make this poem an elegy, but then I’ll remember all the aubades
I wrote about you, and I’ll realize I’m not quite ready for an elegy.
I may never be ready for an elegy, so I’ll hide it tomorrow
morning between my sore jaw and morning light.
Glass: A Journal of Poetry is published weekly by Glass Poetry Press.
All contents © the author.
All contents © the author.
