ISSN: 1941-4137
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
Finnegan Bly is a queer, Korean-American writer from rural Northern California. Their work has appeared or will appear in Brink, Grist, mercury firs, Rhino, and elsewhere. They are an MFA candidate at Louisiana State University.
Distal
(I was,
otherwise)
(Or,
land)
(California,
disarming syllable)
(by syllable,
watching the valley)
(lap its empty bowl,
in Louisiana)
(I feel closer than ever,
to California)
(by a Christian surplus,
I validate)
(by saviorism,
unable to conceive)
(a surplus,
met with a surplus)
(of orphanized,
children)
(I am of,
the remedy)
(a mother,
to mother)
(the remediaries,
of the Forgotten) War
(I place,
the body)
(the body,
cities)
(the body,
towns)
(my thought,
running in front)
(of language,
to die)
(my peripheral,
visual)
(field,
my lived reality)
(at the unfixed,
vanishing point)
(the impossible,
desire)
(to be,
native)
(the heart,
dampened by dry grass)
(a childhood,
of wildfire)
(there is no,
water left)
(no garden,
of one's own making)
This poem works in and around my upbringing in Orland, CA, a small agricultural town where my mother was also raised. It is an attempt to cross literal and temporal distances, moving from California to Louisiana, where I currently live, while reaching towards my personal-historical inheritances as the descendant of a Korean-adoptee. It should be noted that this poem owes a debt to poet 최 Lindsay’s collection Transverse, where I first encountered writing in coordinate pairs.
Glass: A Journal of Poetry is published monthly by Glass Poetry Press.
All contents © the author.
All contents © the author.
