ISSN: 1941-4137
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
Jane Marshall Fleming is a PhD student in the Department of English at the University of Texas at Austin and the author of Ocotillo Worship (APEP Publications, 2019) and Violence/Joy/Chaos (Rhythm & Bones Press, 2020). Her poetry, collages, and prose have appeared or are forthcoming in Foliate Oak, Ghost City Review, Barren Magazine, Pussy Magic Magazine, and Honey & Lime, among others. She is currently a Contributing Editor at Barren Magazine.
[no one tells you how to birth spirits]
No one tells you how to bring
Spirits
through your womb so empty
and hollow and echoing because
you could not fill it with tiny
fingers and pomegranate bellies
just yet
just yet but they clawed at your pink
uterine lining and begged you not to go
resisting red pills on tongues and threatening
to take you with their pound of flesh and begging you
not to go not
to go but you had to go
because it wasn’t time just yet —
It wasn’t time for laughter like wind chimes and screams
pulling at your breast and so you
just feel foolish that you can still feel spirits
on your chest
their translucent knees held to dream-filled heads
soft with tufts of gray and dodging their daddy’s rage
and that’s why you couldn’t let them loose
in your belly today —
but no one tells you how to birth spirits
after their cells have turned to blood
and dust and biohazard waste.
so, you just repeat what they taught you in your sleep
a home can be anything and anywhere as long as we get to be held by you one day
as long as we get to be held by you one day —
and you hope that’s true and you hold them on your finger like a butterfly
no, a moth
flapping its yellow wings slow and patient
until you close your eyes and purse your lips
and blow.
Glass: A Journal of Poetry is published monthly by Glass Poetry Press.
All contents © the author.
All contents © the author.
