ISSN: 1941-4137
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
Born on Oahu, Derek N. Otsuji is the author of The Kitchen of Small Hours (SIU Press, 2021), featured in Honolulu Magazine’s “Essential Hawaii Books You Should Read: the Next 134” He is a 2023 Longleaf Fellow in Poetry and a 2019 Tennessee Williams Scholar. Recent work has appeared in 32 Poems, Beloit Poetry Journal, Rattle, Southern Review, and The Threepenny Review.
April 1, 2026
Swim
I slip under —
pulled by the amniotic tug of memory
— the arms remember that they were oars, legs
fuse into a fluke, webbing flares between
digits of the hand. Sunlight on the body’s
smooth vessel, rippling — I descend the shaft
of time, and from the glass elevator
step out into dream. The breath encapsulates
a shimmering wish, vanishes on contact
with the upper air. I am a blue-lipped fish
moving down corridors dissolving into
transparency where all pathways
— in all
directions now open before me
— as if everything were still possible,
the imagined other life, suspended.
This poem is an attempt to recapture what I loved most about swimming when I was a child — the experience of becoming a different creature with capabilities activated only in water. This magical transformation was accompanied by the feeling of moving through a dreamlike world where time slowed down. All life begins in water. And deep in the subconscious there must be memories of what it felt like to be suspended in the womb. I assembled these fragments of memory, sensory inputs, and dream imagery into a poetic montage.
Glass: A Journal of Poetry is published weekly by Glass Poetry Press.
All contents © the author.
All contents © the author.
