ISSN: 1941-4137
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
Jennifer Saunders is a poet living in German-speaking Switzerland. Her chapbook Self-Portrait with Housewife was selected by Gail Wronsky as the winner of the 2017 Clockwise Chapbook Competition and is forthcoming from Tebot Bach Press. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Georgia Review, Glass, JuxtaProse, Spillway, The Shallow Ends, Whale Road Review, and elsewhere. Jennifer holds an MFA from Pacific University and in the winters teaches skating in a hockey school.
Previously in Glass: A Journal of Poetry:
Note Pinned to My Lips
Measured in Minutes
Wait a Second, Let Me Write It Down
It’s not a joke anymore, the way
if I don’t write it down it won’t happen,
the way I can stand in the grocery store
staring at the milk and not remember
my refrigerator is empty.
How I make lists on my phone, on scrap paper,
write notes on the back of my hand
eggs
sliced turkey
call the roofer
while everything slips through my fingers,
clumsy and grasping. I’d forget my own heart
if it weren’t trapped inside my ribcage
and most days I do
forget it’s there steadily thrumming
detergent
C. to hockey.
I can’t remember
the words to any lullaby, can’t match any song
to its bird however long I study them
outside my window. Sometimes a goldcrest
crashes into the glass and this reminds me
to fill the feeder, reminds me
of all the clear panes I cannot pass through,
polished to high gloss and waiting
for impact. Sometimes breakage
comes as relief.
I’m only held together by the centripetal force
of my own endless spinning. I’m only here
because I don’t remember where else to go.
The birds dart away too fast for me to follow,
my shadow at the window like a phantom cat
and they have inherited enough memory to know
the tearing of teeth at the throat. Some days
I want something to rip through me like that,
to leave me as nothing but blood and bone.
Some days it’s so beautiful, the way broken glass
glitters and throws back the sun.
Glass: A Journal of Poetry is published monthly by Glass Poetry Press.
All contents © the author.
All contents © the author.
