ISSN: 1941-4137
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
Emily Paige Wilson is the author of the chapbook I'll Build Us a Home (Finishing Line Press, 2018). Her poetry has been nominated for Best New Poets, Best of the Net, and the Pushcart Prize. Her work can be found in The Adroit Journal, Hayden’s Ferry Review, PANK, and Thrush, among others. She lives in Wilmington, NC, where she received her MFA from UNCW.
Also by Emily Paige Wilson:
I'll Build Us a Home
Three Poems
Friendship in Trump's America
Three Poems
Previously in Glass: A Journal of Poetry:
Etymology of a Body
Love Poem for a Dry Spell
Hypochondria, Least Powerful of the Greek Gods, and Her Estranged Half-Brother Sisyphus
She sometimes gets postcards from him
when he's not rolling that stone. I've always held
deep and bitter resentment towards you is as far
as she reads. She weeps for him and then
wonders about the weeping — how it's a release for her
and her alone. She's heard that the stone is engulfed
in the flames of its own momentum as it falls,
kinetic energy making it an ember. His palms
now pads of pus, charred skin that will blister,
burst. He knows he will never again touch
anything soft. She thinks of the pansies
that will mourn this loss, their purple cheeks
tear-streaked. She can barely bring herself to say
his name anymore — tries but finds her tongue
stuttering a thesaurus of similar sounds
instead: susurrus, synergy, silence.
She'd ask to visit him if he wouldn't say
no. Hypochondria knows he's never taken her
symptoms seriously, the panic she's attracted,
aches born less in the bones than the brain.
She wishes she could see him, hug the new
muscles of his body like he was a bank
and they could have a civil exchange of all
they've cost each other. Look, he would say,
I hold my pain in a way others can believe.
See how neatly it fits in my hands. So visible and clean.
Glass: A Journal of Poetry is published monthly by Glass Poetry Press.
All contents © the author.
All contents © the author.
