ISSN: 1941-4137
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
Kanika Lawton is a Toronto-based writer and editor. She is an MA student at the University of Toronto’s Cinema Studies Institute, Founder and Editor-In-Chief of L’Éphémère Review, Social Media Manager of Rambutan Literary, and a 2018 Pink Door Fellow. Her work has appeared in Ricepaper Magazine, Vagabond City Literary Journal, Hypertrophic Literary, Longleaf Review, and Glass Poetry, and profiled in The Ellis Review and Horn & Ivory Zine. She is the author of Wildfire Heart (The Poetry Annals, 2018), Loneliness, and Other Ways to Split a Body (Ghost City Press, 2018), and Monster (Girl) Theory (post ghost press, 2019).
Previously in Glass: A Journal of Poetry:
After, He Tells Me to Get Up
Poets Resist
Edited by Michael Carter
August 12, 2019
Edited by Michael Carter
August 12, 2019
On Political(ized) Life
Everything I do is out of love; which means
I am constantly splitting myself in half, which
means I am both the knife and the waiting flesh,
urging myself to be gentle, breaking apart instead.
It was Butler who said misrecognition lies at the
heart of the scene of address, meaning even when
I do not respond to the calls, even when I shrug
off their wandering hands, even when I cut off
my own ears, it was meant for me: dyke crawling
from acid tongue, Asian bitch from leering mouth.
No one asks what you really are before grinding
you into dirt — I taste like rancid blood. I taste like
the earth set aflame. I say I love you as if that will
protect me; once I folded myself into your arms and
everything went quiet. I always walk behind men
who feel like my father — my hands know anger but
they’ve been cut to the bone. I wonder what it’s like
to be a body left alone; I don’t mean to be bitter, but
I’ve been chewing on rotten fruit since birth, turning
myself pulp before they can tear me to shreds. The
nurses didn’t believe my mother was my mother.
Perhaps my face was too pink with new skin, or
maybe soft rage. Or maybe unbridled sorrow.
I didn’t come screaming into the world —
The cord around my neck made sure of that.
Poets Resist is published by Glass Poetry Press.
All contents © the author.
All contents © the author.
