ISSN: 1941-4137
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
Katherine Oung is a queer Chinese American writer. They daylight as a journalist and moonlight as a creative writer. Their poems can be found or are forthcoming in Sine Theta Magazine, fourteen poems, and elsewhere. Their nonfiction writing can be found in The New York Times, The Nashville Scene, No Bells Magazine, and elsewhere.
December 17, 2025
Indictment
after Maria Gray
I remember the afternoon living room God. Radical
as love, light bounded off glassy horizon-buildings,
streaming into windows and eyes. After, I fled.
Watched hunting videos on a borrowed TV. Learned
that the surest killings begin with understanding prey. Plying
trust from game. At sixteen, ignorant as fowl, I was
coerced. At eighteen, raped. On the twenty-eighth, a guest
in my house put his hands on me. I fled, but the
impressed plane of his palm remained. With me, that night,
he slept. I stayed. Awake to wait. For morning light,
a wake. I wanted to be dependable. Architect of light.
Dutiful, primordial, derisive. Impenetrable
stenographer of light. The next evening, I climbed the first
year’s roof, greedy to see the sun set the same. The bare
trees’ whining breath on
my nails, my flesh, the same.
Glass: A Journal of Poetry is published weekly by Glass Poetry Press.
All contents © the author.
All contents © the author.
