ISSN: 1941-4137
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
Roy White is a blind person who lives in Saint Paul, Minnesota with a lovely human and an affable lab mix. His work has appeared, or is about to, in Poetry, BOAAT Journal, Baltimore Review, Tinderbox, and elsewhere.
Also by Roy White:
Rosemary, That's For Remembrance
Impossible Flower
What We Have Here Is a Failure
Decorative Boulder
Soyez indulgents quand vous nous comparez
A ceux qui furent la perfection de l'ordre
— Guillaume Apollinaire, “La Jolie Rousse”
(“The Pretty Redhead”)
Trepanned under chloroform,
in the year of the chicken,
we stare out of mute
dolls’ eyes held open
by tiny lead weights.
Adorable Reason,
We are not your enemy;
we are your father’s Oldsmobile
floating down a suburban cul-de-sac,
snagged on a decorative boulder.
Take pity on the stranded
street signs, on the faith
in straight lines and solid ground
which they cannot dissemble.
During the summer of 2017 I was being haunted by the news, like everybody else, and by Guillaume Apollinaire’s “Pretty Redhead,” the strangely sweet-tempered manifesto that he wrote at the end of his short life. Avant-garde manifesti are so often filled with a kind of “My Generation” asshole posturing, but Apollinaire’s is more like a sad farewell to the charming redhead Reason. “There are so many things I don’t dare tell you, / so many things you won’t let me tell you. / Take pity on me!” Who could resist?
Glass: A Journal of Poetry is published monthly by Glass Poetry Press.
All contents © the author.
All contents © the author.
