ISSN: 1941-4137
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
Avra Elliott is a writer and toymaker from New Mexico. A graduate of the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College, Elliott’s fiction has been published in Sweet Tree Review, Shadowgraph Quarterly, Contrary, and Noctua Review where she was runner-up for the Neo Americana Fiction Contest. Elliott’s poetry has appeared in, or is forthcoming from, several journals including Crab Orchard Review, Tinderbox, Tupelo Quarterly, Indianapolis Review, Barrow Street, Comstock Review, and Fairy Tale Review. Her chapbook, Desert Selkie, was a semifinalist for the 2018 Sunken Garden Poetry Prize.
The Glory of the Smoke Tree is the Utter Failure
Desert animal that I am,
my teeth came in early
nearly drawing blood
instead of milk,
my mother struck me,
and laughs at this story.
(Freud blames her
for my mouth’s transgressions)
how do I accept the provisions
another offers? Out of the way
drives for almond stuffed pastries,
arranging blooms
from sliced apples, pressed
in butter, flour, kissed
with orange marmalade.
I just want you to eat
he says, when I only
ever heard
are you eating again?
I will devour all
or none I will
crawl on all fours
despite my wings,
blemished vesper
bat, consuming venom
of scorpions. My lips
do not know what to do
with your sweetness.
(When left alone I ate
spoonfuls of sugar
coated my throat,
I cleared it with tear-salty
olive and pickle brine)
Raised with scratches,
my lungs strengthen
with smoke, must I grow
at an angle to receive
support? Then I will grow
straight to noon sun
and bite her breast, nurse
heated grudges, and burn
new memories, chewed
on my tongue.
Within a small group of writers exchanging work and ideas, the poet Alicia Elkort encouraged us to find inspiration from the smoke tree, the seeds of which can only grow after being scratched from rocks and sand during flashfloods. She prompted us to consider “the transfer of the experience to the skin.” The title comes from a description of a smoke tree in “Trees Worth Knowing” by Julia Ellen Rogers, printed in 1917. The stylized language reminded me of the vintage primers my mother taught me to read from, children’s books aptly filled with both tenderness and violence.
Glass: A Journal of Poetry is published monthly by Glass Poetry Press.
All contents © the author.
All contents © the author.
