ISSN: 1941-4137
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
Shannon Cuthbert is a writer and artist living in Brooklyn. Her poems have appeared in Gingerbread House, Chronogram, and Enchanted Conversation, among others, and are forthcoming in The Writers’ Café Magazine, Call Me [Brackets], Liquid Imagination, and The Orchards Poetry Journal.
turnpike
i know the feeling of exhaling into a void
bones tight blood thick
an animal skinned and swallowing backward
i too have stopped my car in rain
sat beneath streetlights big as planets
chest compressed with some kind of knowledge
if only the warehouses weren’t so empty
the windows with gouged eyes and teeth
black hole holds me in its grasp
i too have dared the voices of ancestral women
that fondle the radio dials
clouding my brain
to dispel the womb we’ve created with memory
with stories long told
and always half empty
to emerge from their photos
come with knives
with nails
with hooks
down the hall to my bed
dress me like a doll and put me to sleep
smelling of things
better left unsaid
This poem came to me as a series of images, following thoughts about the long thread of ancestors that connect each of us to our current self. I coupled that with thoughts of the empty towns I’ve driven through that those ancestors once occupied. What stories might they tell about what makes us who we are, with darkness as a natural part of that tale?
Glass: A Journal of Poetry is published monthly by Glass Poetry Press.
All contents © the author.
All contents © the author.
