ISSN: 1941-4137
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
Gretchen Primack is the author of the forthcoming collection Visiting Days (Willow Books, April 2019) and two others, Doris' Red Spaces (Mayapple Press) and Kind (Post Traumatic Press). Her poems have appeared in The Paris Review, Prairie Schooner, Poet Lore, Field, Ploughshares, and other journals. Also an animal advocate, she co-wrote the memoir The Lucky Ones: My Passionate Fight for Farm Animals (Penguin Avery).
Also by Gretchen Primack:
Doris' Red Spaces
Kind
The Lucky Ones: My Passionate Fight for Farm Animals (with Jenny Brown)
The Slow Creaking of Planets
Previously in Glass: A Journal of Poetry:
Knowledge (East Wing)
Knight (East Wing)
Poisoned water, poisoned sleep
ground under the heel of my pillow.
If I didn’t know your cell song,
I would think I tread the red
circle alone.
But Etheridge, I found you
here, and I have rolled
myself up in your night speech,
so I know something good
come out of prison.
And I have pressed against
the western wall, so I know
you saw through stone.
It’s not visions in my cell,
never those. Tony hung
from his sheet and I see him.
I see the bars cut the tensed cloth
into pieces across from me.
But not as visions.
And I’d like to report to you,
Sir Knight who gifted me
a name:
Sometimes the wind rings
in this ear and then the other,
but this poetman will die
as trumpets.
Something good come out
of prison.
This poem is part of Visiting Days (forthcoming in April 2019 from Willow Books), a collection that explores the world of a maximum-security men's prison primarily through persona poems. "Knight (East Wing)" includes several phrases from brilliant poems that Etheridge Knight wrote in prison. I have taught in prisons for many years and wanted to honor Etheridge Knight's enormous influence.
Glass: A Journal of Poetry is published monthly by Glass Poetry Press.
All contents © the author.
All contents © the author.
