ISSN: 1941-4137
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
SK Grout (she/they) is a writer, editor and poet who splits her time between Auckland Tāmaki Makaurau and London. Their debut pamphlet, What love would smell like, is published with V. Press. Their poetry and reviews are widely published in the US, UK, Europe and the Pacific.
Previously in Glass: A Journal of Poetry:
Dispatches
November 26, 2025
Repetitive Strain Injury
how many of our stories
begin in the middle
like rambunctious watermelons
then taper off lonely
a Christmas candle in July
here is the newest you learning
the quirks of my body
the burst star skin of my right palm
the grinding knee joints bent in supplication
the stomach that always baubles
when this is new it is a pleasure
folding the dozen of rain into your body
I listen for the light between breaths
I’m susceptible to bass lines
today I learn nothing
by the weight of delay
my words are in your inbox
but not your bloodstream
a frisson of radical opening hope
a spilling, a merging
but I am the one
who must poet alone after
the collection of yous return the gift
in German, that word is a poison
how often I make my body so
an empty airstrip waiting
for the next you to land
with all that untenable, unscreamable sky
I am most interested in the in-between, in the spaces between; in celebration not of confinement; of resistance; contemplating what Bradley Trumpfheller asked in an interview: "can you be tender and unknowable?" In this poem, I wanted to think about the repetitive strain injury that we do to our hands in the act of labor, that is working for long periods until we begin to feel pain, in the same way we might do to our hearts in the act of love and generosity and openness.
Glass: A Journal of Poetry is published weekly by Glass Poetry Press.
All contents © the author.
All contents © the author.
