Chelsea Dingman's first book, Thaw, was chosen by Allison Joseph to win the National Poetry Series, published by the University of Georgia Press (2017). In 2016-17, she also won The Southeast Review's Gearhart Poetry Prize, The Sycamore Review's Wabash Prize, and Water-Stone Review's Jane Kenyon Poetry Prize. Her work can be found in Mid-American Review, Ninth Letter, The Colorado Review, and Gulf Coast, among others.





Chelsea Dingman

When You are Born Missing

half of your heart, I tell you this world owes you nothing. The palmettos & pines will not belong to anyone but themselves, no matter who owns the ground beneath them. You can't even cry, your breaths coming in rasps. But you linger, not knowing how to run. I tell you there are miracles, when miracles are everywhere & nowhere. When we're not lost, so much as lost to the world, looking for a new way of living that doesn't involve blood or the need to breathe. Linger a little longer, I beg you. Maybe what you're missing isn't just a left ventricle to pump blood to your lungs. Maybe it's not knowing how a pulse divides us, as you wander across boundaries between living & not living, to touch me again, as if dying is almost easy.


Glass: A Journal of Poetry is published monthly by Glass Poetry Press.
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