ISSN: 1941-4137
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
Charlotte Covey is from St. Mary’s County, Maryland. She currently lives in St. Louis, and she earned her MFA in Poetry from the University of Missouri-St. Louis in Spring 2018. She has poetry published or forthcoming in journals such as The Normal School, Salamander Review, CALYX Journal, the minnesota review, and the Potomac Review, among others. In 2015, she was nominated for an AWP Intro Journal Award. She is managing editor for WomenArts Quarterly Journal.
goodnight moon
Katie Flynn was seven years old and riding back from
a wedding (where she had been the flower girl) when a
drunk driver hit. Katie’s mother cradled her decapitated
head and refused to move for hours.
sleek black streets turn to rust while
the lamp wheezes its last
flicker. mother crawls through
a shattered window. every inch of her
wet, sweat-slick and red as
a valentine. the shadow of my father
shivers. every piece of the limousine,
an accordion with broken
teeth. mother finds petals left
over from the basket, sprinkles
them in a salt circle. she gathers
every piece of me she can
find. i imagine the pieces she won’t,
stretched on three cushions
inside. little breakings. a spine
cracked open, a throat
but no mouth. i can hear father
choke before he begins. i can see yellow
tape before they place it. this is the best
day of my life. i will dance
with these petals, with this dead
streetlamp on bloody pavement. i will
move sleepy-hollowed.
About four years ago, I was listening to “Limousine” by Brand New. I was very taken with its beauty, and I decided to look up the lyrics. It was then that I discovered that “Limousine” is based on a true story about a little girl named Katie Flynn, who was beheaded in a car accident on the way back from a wedding. A drunk driver struck the limousine she and her family were riding in. Her mother held Katie’s decapitated head in her arms for hours and refused to move. It really stuck with me, and I started having dreams about Katie. Her last words, right before the impact, were “this is the best day of my life.” I became obsessed with Katie and her story, but I never found out much more information. I decided to write her and her parents an elegy, from the perspective of an all-knowing, ghostly Katie, observing the scene and her parents and all of the destruction. I don’t really know why, except that her story plagued my dreams before I wrote the poem, and they stopped after. I chose the title “goodnight moon” as a tribute to the children’s story of the same name, to juxtapose childlike innocence with the fierce tragedy of death.
Glass: A Journal of Poetry is published monthly by Glass Poetry Press.
All contents © the author.
All contents © the author.
