ISSN: 1941-4137
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
Aileen Bassis is a visual artist and poet in New York City working in book arts, printmaking, photography and installation. Her use of text in art led her to explore another creative life as a poet. She was awarded two artist residencies in poetry to the Atlantic Center for the Arts. Her poems have been nominated for Pushcart prizes and two poems are in anthologies on the subject of migration. Her journal publications include B o d y Literature, Spillway, Grey Sparrow Journal, Canary, The Pinch Journal and Prelude.
Poets Resist
Edited by Michael Carter
August 8, 2019
Edited by Michael Carter
August 8, 2019
On and Off the Dixie Freeway
In Florida,
motels are named for dreams
of escape or hope
or afterlife. There’s Blue Lagoon
and Shangri-La and even Paradise Motel.
Florida bears gifts of small surprises: a lizard
flicking an orange dewlap like a heart beating
outside its body & a passing snake delivers
an atavistic shiver down my back & it’s fun
to drive around in my rented Chevy Cruze
on the North Dixie Freeway
where a guy on a motorcycle passes me.
No helmet, ponytail in the wind, belly
comfortably roosting on his legs like an old
song that keeps running in my head & I see
a Confederate flag fluttering
from the back of his seat. I shouldn’t be surprised,
we’re in Florida & this is the Dixie
Freeway, juddering through towns with statues
of Stonewall Jackson & Robert E. Lee
with a history that fits me like someone else’s
clothes & I reach my destination & waiting
for a show to start, hear a blonde lady say, you
can’t sit there
to the singer with dark skin & twisted locks
& the singer answers, this chair is mine, I’ll sit
where I want & everyone keeps chatting & I sip white wine
& nibble snacks
while mosquitoes keen around my head & I don’t
know what to scratch.
Poets Resist is published by Glass Poetry Press.
All contents © the author.
All contents © the author.
