ISSN: 1941-4137
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
Kathryn Bratt-Pfotenhauer is a queer poet from Maryland. Her work has previously been published or is forthcoming in Nimbus, The Roanoke Review, Milkweed Literary Magazine, and L’Éphémère Review. She was a poetry semifinalist for the 2017 St. Lawrence Book Award (Black Lawrence Press) and the 2019 recipient of the Bryn Mawr Bain-Swiggett Poetry Prize for her poem “Self-Portrait as Gorgon.”
Also by Kathryn Bratt-Pfotenhauer:
Two Poems
Self-Portrait as Plague
Monday, and a cloud of locusts
bursts from the soft aperture of my eye;
I’m ugly and awful and full
of your best God, the red salt
of womb limping from me
until I drown the river, upending
the frogs onto its banks; their bellies
pale in the bright morning.
My hair braids thick with lice
and I sic them on men until
the air bleaches with bones. Revenge
is such a hassle, moreso for the
sick. I queen boils. I hail the skies.
Tuck your righteousness behind
your gnashing teeth.
I'm nursing darkness here
and the child has to eat.
The concept for “Self-Portrait as Plague” came after the song “The Plagues” from The Prince of Egypt had been looping in my ears for days. At the time, a depressive episode had completely flattened me, rendering me unable to see myself as human. One day, I wondered what would happen if I were to embrace what the darker parts of my brain had been calling me, what would happen if I could turn that grotesqueness into something empowering. This poem was the result.
Glass: A Journal of Poetry is published monthly by Glass Poetry Press.
All contents © the author.
All contents © the author.
