ISSN: 1941-4137
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
Jessica Hsu is a writer born and raised in California. She recently completed her undergraduate studies at the University of Michigan, where her work has received Hopwood Awards. She currently resides in Wisconsin.
Also by Jessica Hsu:
The Probability Of Loving An Upper Level Statistics Course (And You)
Rebirth (after Frank O’Hara’s “At night Chinamen jump”)
In history class, instead of loaves & fishes, we find fishes
You are who I love
after Aracelis Girmay
You are who I love, goldenrod fields, first snow, blood moon,
Orion’s belt in the Midwest, skies colder than places I once named
home, a silhouette of mist.
You are who I love, you with your daughter
who stumbles & falls & you carry her on your shoulders the whole hike,
the whole journey,
you are who I love,
my father who thumbs up reacts all texts
a coast away,
the sound of a language unrecognized, the sound of a language
learned, you are who I love, you who hum a tune
you cannot name, you in front of
a crowded audience, you unnamed in the audience,
you are who I love. You carrying a story you never thought
would be retold, you listening
to a story then penning
your own because
in stories you dream
& you are who I love,
you who tend to the sneezing & the bloodied,
you who tend to the trees on the streets,
you the cashier packing the groceries before close
when there is no self checkout,
you are who I love at 2am, you
bestie & bro & gurl & love & dumbass
you are who I love, student lugging
groceries uphill, neighbor perched on the same sidewalk
smoking every morning,
you with a lover you cannot yet
declare to the world,
you whom I know &
don’t & will,
you are who I love — you, surviving &
trying to survive against / in
a nation that plunders & bloodies.
you who scream against the “war(s)”
made more massacre than fighting,
you, chanting in icy nights with
your freezing fingers, bodies pressed against body
until fury overtakes the cold. Until fury overtakes the fear &
the petitions, flyers, zines, food, voices begin to
dissolve the numbness
because hope does not fix this world
— you do, I do, we must.
You,
the miracles I crisscross on my path. How we tumbled
into this world on our knees, our minds so
eager to learn, until we forgot
to unlearn
this nation, these cruelties, this normalcy.
How tomorrow must be
nourished by the stubbornness
of today & together — you,
you are who I love.
Glass: A Journal of Poetry is published monthly by Glass Poetry Press.
All contents © the author.
All contents © the author.
