ISSN: 1941-4137
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
Tom Holmes is the editor of Redactions: Poetry & Poetics and the author of three full-length collections of poetry, most recently The Cave (winner of The Bitter Oleander Press Library of Poetry Book Award for 2013), as well as four chapbooks. His writings about wine, poetry book reviews, and poetry can be found at his blog, The Line Break. Find him on Twitter: @TheLineBreak.
Also by Tom Holmes:
The Cave
After Malaguena: Poems after Federico Garcia Lorca's "Malaguena"
Henri, Sophie, & the Hieratic Head of Ezra Pound: Poems Blasted from the Vortex
Poems for an Empty Church
Imagined Scenario 22 of My Birthmother
When you were the age I was
collecting powder-soft,
curled-up bees and hornets
from the windowsill,
and throwing flaming cattails
at my friends, and climbing
out my window at 2 a.m.
to lay traps for early birds,
and lighting firecrackers
and nearly burning down my school,
you were telling an uncle
no and no and no,
and he was telling the police no,
and the police told you no,
and you said to no to a hanger,
and entered Buffalo State Hospital,
and when you had me,
they asked do you know
the father? you said no,
and they asked do you want it?
and you said no and no and no.
This poem, "Imagined Scenario 22 of My Birthmother," is part of a larger series of poems about my birth parents, whom I've never met, as well as my adopted self. Most of the poems in the currently titled manuscript The Book of Incurable Dreams tend towards surrealism. This one, however, is not, though the experience for this imagined mother probably was surreal, as well as horrifying.
Glass: A Journal of Poetry is published monthly by Glass Poetry Press.
All contents © the author.
All contents © the author.
