ISSN: 1941-4137
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
Hila Ratzabi was selected by Adrienne Rich as a recipient of a National Writers Union Poetry Prize and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She is the author of the chapbook The Apparatus of Visible Things. Her poetry is published in Narrative, Alaska Quarterly Review, Drunken Boat, Linebreak, The Nervous Breakdown, Leveler, and other literary journals, and in the anthologies Ghost Fishing: An Eco-Justice Poetry Anthology and The Bloomsbury Anthology of Contemporary Jewish American Poetry. She is the former editor-in-chief and poetry editor of Storyscape. She holds an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College and lives outside Philadelphia.
Imaginary Arctic
On the trip I didn't take to the Arctic Circle
I was eaten by a polar bear.
I was pregnant and fell into the icy sea
and the embryo froze.
I was stuck on a ship
with a bunch of arrogant artists for two weeks.
I saw icebergs the size of God's head.
I wrote letters on frosted paper.
I ate Cliff bars and sweated under layers
of polyester and fleece.
My eyebrows hardened.
Everything melted
in time lapse speed
and the ship rose
by inches each day.
The sun never set.
All that daylight did nothing
but brighten the surface
of loss. Where there were shadows
photographs were taken.
Sketches drafted in snow,
music sifted from silence.
On that trip I wrote poems
to the disappearing planet.
I saw the poles meld together,
houses float on united seas.
It was a new earth, a wet one.
Some of us were left
bewildered, hands pressed
to glass. We waved
at each other from windows
in our flooded living rooms.
It was a trip I'll never forget.
I took glaciers home
as souvenirs. I planted
my face in the snow.
I'm so glad before everything
happened I got to go.
Glass: A Journal of Poetry is published monthly by Glass Poetry Press.
All contents © the author.
All contents © the author.
