ISSN: 1941-4137
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
Farryl Last is a 2015 MFA graduate from Hunter College. She has developed and taught undergraduate courses and works in the field of study abroad. Her poetry has appeared in The Maine Review, Entropy, Red Paint Hill, Hermeneutic Chaos, and Poetry City, USA, among others. She once lived in Mantova, Italy, and taught English there.
to the woman I tried to draw
your hips were beautiful.
if you undressed at the front of the room
knew how I was not an artist, pigeon-awkward
with my drawing, I have a history
of trying things I don't understand.
your hips were beautiful like delicate-bent
birdfeathers. like how I took
all those french film courses when I studied romance
languages, how I always had to explain no,
I'm not studying how to write
romance novels, how still always I
for a second second guess if the lumière
brothers really were named light. I was not an artist, I wasn't
a film student either, though I could imagine
myself as both in the dry light of that big room packed
with artists while I tried to draw fuzzywobbled
lines. your hips were beautiful, how I imagined
your pockets deflated in the back room filled
with charcoal and photos of the adriatic sky.
filled with little lightbulbs too. how instead of drawing
like the men in the movie I'd rather just look
at catherine in jules and jim big-faced projection
at the front of the classroom, full of black
and white sky. the sky is the fullest thing I know.
suns, neutrinos, grapefruit-shaped planets with their lizard
skin, doused in mesopelagic light. I imagine you know this too
even if you never knew how I stood at the back of the room
with my back pressed sunhot on the radiator
I have a history of leaning in the wrong
place, with the wrong language. see how I sneak
little seaside citruses in your pockets? we could
stay for a second once the room empties, you my mesopelagic
cinematograph bird with my pocket-sized dictionaries
and your beautiful hips.
Glass: A Journal of Poetry is published monthly by Glass Poetry Press.
All contents © the author.
All contents © the author.
