James A.H. White is a gay, first-generation Asian-American immigrant by way of England and New Zealand. Winner of an AWP Intro Journals Project award, his writing can be found in Best New British & Irish Poets 2018 (selected by Maggie Smith) and, soon, Best New Poets 2018 (selected by Kyle Dargan), in addition to Black Warrior Review, Colorado Review, Lambda Literary, Quarterly West, and Washington Square Review, among others. Author of hiku [pull], a chapbook (Porkbelly Press), he is currently seeking a publisher for his debut full-length collection.





James A.H. White

Tuglines

Even wood on the chopping block knows it’s not a choice to become half a piece of a tower of rings. One for each year it wasn’t cut into a joke book or legal pardon or closet door. Knows when enough is enough so it splits in half with a crack & doesn’t cry when it’s piled in a corner behind the shed beneath a torn tarp my father says is fine but his trying throws on & off say otherwise. When the bush burns in Exodus, historians say it could have been (if real) a misinterpretation of Mt. Sinai, described earlier as “burning”. To mom: what you said God says about men who lie with other men is a mountain inside another mountain inside a burning bush. This is our universe tossed in a marble, says the final alien in Men In Black. This is the path to a place that is great, say the riled up sled dogs. When I came out & said I’m ashamed for disappointing you, I also meant to say I’d been praying again. How at sunset when my husband offers to load the dishwasher & walk the dog around the block, I sit quietly on the balcony with myself hoping everything comes around. The sun seems to know because it doesn’t stay long that I’m here for the long haul, that I must ride on in every Great Race. & even the horizon after the sun slowly falls through its hands casually shouts through them, Mush




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