ISSN: 1941-4137
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
M. Wright is the author of a boy named jane (Bottlecap Press, 2017) which was recently re-released as a special edition that included 39 original paintings from local artist Leah Fargo. He is the 2016 winner of The Atlantis Award for Poetry and his poems have recently appeared in U City Review, Wildness, Saint Paul Almanac, Temenos Journal, and others. When he is not writing or reading, M. likes to spend his time kayaking in northern Minnesota with his dearly loved partner.
Also by M. Wright:
a boy named jane
Dear Dementia
Previously in Glass: A Journal of Poetry:
Before Quiet
We lived on a mantel (2001)
There had to be a simpler way
than to tweezer pluck
each skeletal body
from the bottle.
You cannot learn to swim
by taking the ocean apart.
You cannot pass an hour
without finding something worth worshiping.
I’ve found
no matter how many times a chime
is called a chime
it remains a symbol to me.
I grew up with one of those
drowning clocks in my home.
It would call out in the night
from my mom’s end of the hallway.
She brought it offerings in a box
and laid candles at its feet when I was born.
My mother took her hammer
and shattered the ice age into ocean
when she made me so I could
teach the waves about forgiveness
and dawn and dawn and the overture
that preludes light it comes at postcard
intervals but not the way a Jasmine sip of tea
licks off some layer of burned gum
tissue it’s more of a crescendo
the way the sweet tangerine
unwraps itself in close proximity to sea salt
and beach juice slip down throat
but it hasn’t yet metamorphosed from smell
and I’m not aware enough
of where my body is it’s swimming
in the pool it’s gorging me
even as I hold up shells as props
to symbolize the hollowness of fear
against the face of the hallowness of my youth here
look at my skin it isn’t even pruning yet
I understand no amount of showmanship
can keep the moon from reflecting the entirety
of the previous day so I look backward too
and let my body prune.
Glass: A Journal of Poetry is published monthly by Glass Poetry Press.
All contents © the author.
All contents © the author.
