ISSN: 1941-4137
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
Author photo by Lindsey Michelle
Brandon Melendez is a Mexican-American poet from California. He is the author of Gold That Frames The Mirror (Write Bloody 2019). A recipient of the the 2018 Djanikian Scholarship from the Adroit Journal, and the 2018 Academy of American Poets Award, his poems can be found in Black Warrior Review, Muzzle Magazine, Ninth Letter, PANK, Sixth Finch, and elsewhere. He currently lives in Boston and is an MFA candidate at Emerson College.
Also by Brandon Melendez:
Gold That Frames the Mirror
Two Poems
I Feel Most Like Myself with Painted Nails
Universe Ending (in Gratitude)
the best way to unbury yourself
is to become a seed & then
something more.
at the family reunion, my father
tells the same old jokes,
but they’ll never fail
to break me open, a piñata
of eggshell & precious stones.
do you know a more miraculous joy
than joy that refuses the passage of time,
that pauses wind inside the lung?
everything I love about this world
can pass between my father’s front teeth
like a single humming guitar string.
what myth doesn’t have a man
cursing god for what is absent
in him? after all rage sings
the loudest. yet in the short time
I have on this earth — between
the steam engine & last glacial melt —
I choose gratitude.
I choose garden & gravel.
if life is the slow burn of loss
then forgive me
for keeping a few extra matches
in my pocket. for collecting atlases
& shoveling ash into my stomach.
more than anything I am afraid of forgetting
where I came from. what if tomorrow
I turn around & can’t place all the people
smiling. or worse
what if all I see is a string of skulls
held together by fishing line, the hook
in my lip. if memory is a bridge
built with marbled brick
then do not worry whether it’s safe
to cross. come. let’s sit against the ledge
knowing we won’t jump. dangle our feet
while we take turns guessing
where the bridge might end: pasture.
a padlocked room. a well that spits out
maracas ornamented with bone.
if I must fail to outlive myself,
know I am still thankful
we met here today.
grateful neither of us vanished
before we found the other.
the best way to unend yourself
is to build a door in the dark,
people will come for miles
to find it. can you believe
I have a name. I have a name
that someone — who had not yet
met me — wrote down in ink
& wondered what it might sound like
swaddled in skin.
Glass: A Journal of Poetry is published monthly by Glass Poetry Press.
All contents © the author.
All contents © the author.
