ISSN: 1941-4137
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
Jessica Abughattas lives in Los Angeles. Her first book, Strip (University of Arkansas), won the 2020 Etel Adnan Poetry Prize selected by Fady Joudah and Hayan Charara. A Kundiman fellow, her poems appear in Tupelo Quarterly, Waxwing, Redivider, Best of the Net 2019, and other places.
Also by Jessica Abughattas:
Strip
My Grandmother the Leo Tells Me About Her Nine Lives
Riding in a Bus on the Way to Prison
Anarchy
He waves his pointer finger at me howling about Bakunin
as I devour Mohinga and tea leaf salad. At the Burmese restaurant
on Sunset, late on a Wednesday night, he wants to talk
about anarchy. Not the SLC Punk! kind but the pleased-
with-itself grad student Noam Chomsky kind. It’s like you said,
when you were yelling at that cop apologist on Gretchen’s roof,
he tells me.
Yes, I say. And if machines replace labor, we’ll have pleasure.
Who's concerned about the end of labor anyway? The end of labor’s
a party, his hands sliding off my leggings by light of salt lamp.
Does hedonism set me apart? I’m no artist.
I want to fuck his face off later for saying that, and I do.
I won’t lie down and play dead, a yoga class
gathered to release tension. Tension’s good. I'm angry
every minute of every day: the ordinary treachery of art school
in a business park. Oh, how I wanted to learn Great Books.
I'm not alone. Everyone I've loved owes money to something
that governs. They're indemnified with a banquet of leather shoes.
My darling, with a face like a Chekhov play, says:
what a lucrative formula —
and later, as fermented hot sauce churns in my stomach,
he rests his face on my womb in the dark.
His beard of black curls. My unbalanced gut. An idea of finance
somewhere in the room, looming.
Glass: A Journal of Poetry is published monthly by Glass Poetry Press.
All contents © the author.
All contents © the author.
