ISSN: 1941-4137
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
Madeleine Barnes is a poet, visual artist, and doctoral fellow in English Literature at the Graduate Center, CUNY. Her debut poetry collection, You Do Not Have To Be Good, was recently selected as the winner of Trio House Press' open reading period, and will be published in 2020. She is the author of three chapbooks, most recently Women's Work, forthcoming from Tolsun Books, and Light Experiments (Porkbelly Press, 2019). She serves as Poetry Editor at Cordella Magazine, a publication that showcases the work of women and non-binary writers and artists. She earned an MFA in Creative Writing from NYU in 2016, and she teaches at Brooklyn College.
Also by Madeleine Barnes:
The Mark My Body Draws In Light
Light Experiments
Dreamscape with Embryo
In my dream you were grape-sized
and wanted milk.
I had sparkling water, no milkbottle,
but I watched you bloom,
you who I might never give birth to
because of my life is governed
by medicine.
Is there a remedy?
Last winter I sat in the library
as though inside the beak of a bird
reading a study on women who stopped
their medications in order to become pregnant —
many terminated one third of the way through,
as life had become dire, unlivable.
I pressed the pages flat
with fingertips like kerosene.
Child who my father so badly wants to meet,
should I pass on this linage of pills,
mirrors, curved spines, anxiety,
postpartum, hospital gowns — to you?
Would you be like me, undoing
the latticework of your body
with rituals when pain splinters
the nesting bowl? I would
talk you through it. Once,
I told my mother that being alive
meant always being worried
about death — I would rather
be a drop in the ocean,
or a prism.
Ungrateful!
If you weren’t born, how could you
be loved? She said.
Must something
be conscious
in order to be loved?
Little fleck of gold —
tell me what you want.
I’ll clear the area,
dilate, iron-infused,
see what I can make
with blood and flesh,
wait at the ruby-red
station of withdrawal
to stop shaking,
for sleep to return.
I know the risks:
uncontrollable crying,
seizures, delirium,
vomiting, tremors.
Soft anonymous:
let me know.
You do not have to
be grateful.
You do not
have to be good.
Glass: A Journal of Poetry is published monthly by Glass Poetry Press.
All contents © the author.
All contents © the author.
