ISSN: 1941-4137
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
Yanyi is a poet and critic. In 2018, he won the Yale Series of Younger Poets Prize, awarded by Carl Phillips, for his first book, The Year of Blue Water (Yale University Press 2019). Currently, he is an associate editor at Foundry and an MFA candidate at New York University. The recipient of fellowships from Asian American Writers Workshop and Poets House, his recent work has appeared or is forthcoming in LA Review of Books, Poetry, and Bellevue Literary Review.
Blessing
Reader,
when you opened this poem, you
were expecting, perhaps, some fight song
or criticism, some litany or ode. You feel,
on days maybe like this one, too angry
or ill, or ill with anger,
to recognize even yourself. On the out-
side, you still clean, cook, and
meet friends and family. You try to
keep the forms intact. You may want
to know where to look for light
— there is some here, but facing away,
I am sitting in shade, the other
cheek of the sun, the other side
of pothos, aloe, tomato, zuzu —
plants you may have come to love and
know in these years. You have wanted
to know that you can bring life, still, into
the world. If not your children. If not your
words, or art, which you have become too
tired to start. Reader, may sometimes you
merely read. As you read, you are blessing
this poem. As you read, may you stop paying
mind, these words still here,
and may you have the space to be
in the rooms of your own thoughts
and wants. Participation is not
production, for the greatest thievery
of injustice, in unequal measure, is the
thievery of our lives as we desire to live
them. Unlike the beginning of your life, you
need not shout to be recognizable
to yourself. Outside, the afternoon hollows,
yet another day is both exclamation and
ordinary, song is not illusion, nor peace
a dream only possible for those
who inherit the most dominating
violence. We who inherit nothing
we have asked for
let go in this form. The hour is
simply sleeping.
Glass: A Journal of Poetry is published monthly by Glass Poetry Press.
All contents © the author.
All contents © the author.
