ISSN: 1941-4137
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
Author photo by Jessica Bennett
Stephanie Burt is Donald P. and Katherine B. Loker Professor of English at Harvard University. Her work appears in the New York Times Book Review, the New Yorker, and the London Review of Books, among others. Her other books of poetry and literary criticism — fourteen in all — include We Are Mermaids, Advice from the Lights, and Don’t Read Poetry: A Book About How to Read Poems. She lives in Massachusetts.
Also by Stephanie Burt:
Taylor’s Version: The Poetic and Musical Genius of Taylor Swift
We Are Mermaids
Advice from the Lights
Don’t Read Poetry: A Book About How to Read Poems
Ice Age
after the Old English
Men without masks, and women and others, shiver,
thumbs numb, half-frozen, all down Hennepin Ave.,
pressing their plastic whistles to dry mouths.
Winter is never the enemy: slush slows the foe,
flak-jacketed wannabe conquerors, in their fools' pride,
Confederates facing Colvill’s cannonades.
That ended. This will.
Compacts adopt a pedestrian’s patience and pace,
rapid responders, ready to read their rights,
tailing false prophets and black Ford Expeditions.
Schoolteachers shush their charges and seal red doors;
no one clears snow from a playground. Small gloves stay clean.
One year no one took attendance. Plague yeeted them home.
That ended. This will.
Steamships of suppliants once steered the Mother of Waters,
catching their cargo from every wood-planked port.
Sometimes they capsized in changing channels, and sank;
some needed rigorous rescue. Some on deck drowned.
That ended. This will.
Cold courthouse steps. Make sure you get their names.
“Sometimes I wish you would just hold me in contempt.”
Somebody torches a tent city. Oceans away,
somebody ploughs down another one. Wheat rots on piers.
The law is a series of funerals. Sleeping dogs lie
and dream of drenched kittens they shelter, whose breath grows short.
Or else: the law is a toothpick house, put up
with putty, and wet bruised fingers, and brave belief.
That ended. This will.
And you, in the blue light, bleary and wanting sleep,
typing out tropes with plastic between your teeth,
entering expiration dates — what do you want?
You want to do something, but not, and never, enough.
Comfort is relative. Churches are forts. Stay warm.
20 lb. bags of rice and beans. If you can’t
slip out safe, we’ll drop one by your front door.
Once the Ice Age pressed hard fingers across the Great Plains,
molding moraines: you can trace their gravel retreat
where farmers now furrow, not far from the State Fair.
That ended. This will.
Glass: A Journal of Poetry is published monthly by Glass Poetry Press.
All contents © the author.
All contents © the author.
