BLIND GLASS

“A carafe, that is a blind glass.” — Gertrude Stein, Tender Buttons

CONTENTS

Strike Anywhere // Dandi Meng Ode to Edo // Xoe Amer The Campo de’ Fiori // Jion Kim Ineffable // Clair Dunlap Reappropriation // Ryan Michael Owens If a Dead Bird is a Good Omen then what is the Burning Like? // Ariel Basom Rear Window // Adria Olson Skinning // Garrett Evans Love Letter // Melissa Stein For the Straight Razors // Brieana Ripley Sub-altar // Xoe Amer Electric Cave // Hyungbin Kang Witness Statement // Claire Peckham Whatever is Beautiful, That Whatever is You. // Ryan Chu Ardentia // Xoe Amer Verse // Dandi Meng

Strike Anywhere

The bear says holy smokes and we all burst into flames. Match heads huddle in an open square

to voice their contrariness in the fire’s phraseology. A firein the poem is worth ten

in the bush. So too the bushesare alight, hot trails that runfrom blackened mouths as

not speech, not deoxygenated air. We burn almost without touch.

Ode to Edo

Rode to Edo today,the horses’ tails were waterfalls in Sumi ink.The plum blossoms half-bloomed and the cloudsrent by stitches of wild ducks.

Swung wide the gate to Edo Castle,the bay in panorama.

Peaked roofs and the houses are wood,so easily charred down down down.Barrels make burly buttresses, inside each house are rooms and contents, like layers of kimono unwrap them—green, orange, carmine, kitchen, child, butterflies.City limits frayed, dirt floors for the poor,and the undesirables trail off in tendrils.Inhabitants are constantly peeling away strips of themselves.Courtesans patch them, each noon a procession.The courtesans’ teeth are blackened, forged.

Good steel has shivers in it,the edge lies neatly concealedbetween shoulder blades.

Finite, floating.Clog-sandals make you tall in the snow, your white ankles exposed.

The Campo de’ Fiori“His crime was his belief the universe does not revolve around the human being” – Heather McHugh on Giordano Bruno (1548-1600)

Hundreds of tourists bustle through the Campo de’ Fiori each day,snapping photos of picturesque buildings in shades of sienna and Saturn,flip-flops and bubble gum clicking on cobblestones and tongues to the croon of theswaying saxophonist.

They filter through the thirty-something tents of the farmers’ marketplace,pinching different fruits before saying, “I’ll take a bag of these, per favore.”They sort through boxes of linguine, fettuccine, multi-colored tagliatelle, andchocolate penne.

In the midst of this chaos, the statue of Giordano Bruno looms above all:a hooded, robed man with furrowed brows, protruding cheekbones, eyes in shadow,hands crossed over a book. They take turns posing by the blackened bronze statue.Cameras flash.

I am no exception. I too captured photos of the statue and stood in its shadeadmiring Rome’s beauty, never thinking much about history or meaninguntil I read a poem about the philosopher who long ago burned to ashes in theCampo de’ Fiori.

Bruno, engulfed by flames at the stake for his unorthodox beliefs in science:an endless universe of unknown worlds and creatures, a heliocentric model of thisplanetary system. A heretic of his time, a forgotten martyr of free thinking in thepresent day.

When tourists sit at the statue’s base, spitting seeds from purple grapesand kids use slingshots to shoot glowing, plastic rocket-toys into the evening sky,I picture Bruno’s body on that February night, the only lamp lighting the square.

Ineffable

i am the uncouth lapidary.i am the cut diamond.

i’ve got the chisel in my pinkie finger, thebiggest and worst word for youunder my tongue.

Reappropriation

A scene is starting on your porch.

There’s the daffodil dirt, wondering:“Nobody ever asked me if I wanted a cigarette.”

The paint pays no mind.It’s “just trying to keep this house a home.”

Your home,as much as anythingthat can be possessed.

For example, that coughless catwho sends you bills you never open.“Finance is an art form,” he reveals,scoffing at your empty refrigerator.“Half full of nothing is something,”she mouths back.

This makes you cry,but you smile through it.

“Can I ask you something?”suggest the flames wasting it all away.

“I would like nothing better in the whole world.”

“Do you think I’m being selfish?”

If a Dead Bird is a Good Omen then what is the Burning Like?

There might be a bird: falling instead of flying.The horizon is full of them: all the way to Africa.What’s the opposite of inertia?What’s the word for lacking further momentum?

Death is like burning, the smoke like leaving;Life is inertia: building potential in the body,Like a slingshot, propelling the ether out of the realm.When this happens will I fly?

Naked bodies can roll in the sand,Dead bodies pull the strings of the livingIn a puppet show worth the cost.It makes it acceptable: the loss of animation.

Do you keep a penny under your tongue?I hold a dollar there;When the time comes, I hope not to be alone.I dream of company when the curtain closes.

When the lights go down in the catacombsIt takes a special kind of vision to know whyBlood still rushes through me like the sea,Like a pigeon flying over another pigeon.

No compromise less forgiving than the end,Sifting through an hourglass to reach the river:Come closer, I don’t want to miss it.

This black hole is empty without you.

The light is not luminous;It is eerie as it floatsAlone on the surface:Stagnant as the day I was born.

Rear Window

Every so often I am reminded of theclassic Alfred Hitchcock movie where

Jimmy Stewart witnesses a murderthrough his Rear Window. But instead

of a murder, I witness you throwing yourbed sheets up into the air on a Saturday 

morning, to smooth out the wrinkles beforeclothing your bare mattress with them.

I glance over as you map out equations withblue and green markers on your windows or

I look over as you laugh, as the glow of thetelevision illuminates your face when we both 

watch the same late night talk show host.Only an alley and a few panes of glass

are between the rhythms of our lives, and sometimes I feel like I actually know you.

Sometimes I feel like if someone were to ask me what your name was, I would know

it. Or at least guess it on the third try. I thinkI could tell someone what condiments you

prefer on your sandwiches and which movies you think are overrated. Underrated.

But tonight, I see you turning your light off to go

to bed, then turning it back on because youmust have forgot something in the kitchen.

And I do not know what it was. I do not even have a guess.

Skinning

A black clock on a white wall ticking.An orange in a blue bowl until peeling.The warm basket of your fingers weighs a globe. You skin the fruit, halve it by the navel—a droplet of juice on your knuckle—and leave the bitter white curls shrugged from its flesh on the floor, amid the seeds you spat.

tick.

Another black clock mars an offwhite wall.On my eyelids, I strain to paint you weighing my hands like fruit.

Peel them. Like an orange. With your nails.

tick. Skin me.

Love Letter

I want to lick that freckleOff the slope of your right breast

And keep it like a stamp on my tongue, Sealing saliva to your curves,

But my mother insistsIt is an eye, His eye.

Is He squinting steadilyAs I unlatch bra clasps beneath fingers?

I’m hungry for wet heatDripping sweat down

The arch of your back,The entrance to my church,

Slithering across thighs,I slurp silk skin.

Your freckle wincing,Wilted paper in my mouth.

For the Straight Razors

Knife to his throathe glanced at the gleaming bladeand was most afraidof his reflection

Sub-altar

When the sea threw me strange missionsI shook to fulfill them.“Blow into the hollow places,”it beat at me“See the sources of silver needlesin her moonlit teeth.”

I kissed the altar of her shouldersblowing out imaginary candles, we were side-by-side sand castles straddling the dark.

When the fire-flickers cast strange visionsI sucked the shadows from the ceiling like smoke.The flick of her fingersfanning out to yawnstruck me like a flat blade.The rolling of a sea of blanketson her exposed belly,I am a strangerlooking up at a vast land,and in an instantshe threw the switch on it all.

Electric CaveWhere Alph, the sacred river, ran through caverns measureless to mandown to a sunless sea– Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “Kubla Khan”

madeto upgrade.                  I love the glow-blue dusty-dell  that hums and weeps                  enuff heat fuh’  cash-peeps                  depressing and shutting itself right,

anadvanced can.                  The particles innit [sic] in flux aside                    the agape fan slot slide,                  therefore a rubbered shaft finds home in theonemechanism.                  Fast, (you’ve?), parts silver, and writ-wrought might suffice.                  A twinkle the device                  sends out, perpetuates                                    thepossibility                  of I saw these. The modder derives a pleas-                  ure, wiring blue, from wiring red;                  he loves all of it, cares a ton for starts,

thinks,mize-well sink

                 enamored before the tele-wish, as it maps right scenes,                 and also the silly; fan-love all memes.                 Mode cools, guided beneath a flutter.Allinternal                  parts, minus screws, are segments furnished                  by pliant elements—                  call the digital features of                                                     bractcompact.                  It makes for bliss, ionized moves, returns,                  gadget throats, the machine can                  make one sit, and fathom wide-

eyed.Simplified                  restlessness has glued, has bit man, give-                  n man but a death drive,                  hits, truths. Plus we know gold in it.

Witness Statement

No, I didn’t see it happen. Desert, somewhere. Looking for food. Yes, I did hear it.Booms, mostly. Rumbling.The kind you feel, not the kind you hear. Trees shivered.I was only looking for food. Yes,I was preoccupied, please,Don’t look at me like that. Yes, I went there. Gray. Flat. More sulfur Than oxygen. No,I didn’t see them.I only saw what they left behind.Crock pots, olive oil, Stone walls painted blue, well,What was left of them. Cracked, crumbling like molding bread.Yes, I walked through their houses, ash on the bedspreads, holes in the floors.No, I didn’t know when I found it. How could I? The skin was burned black.I was only looking for food, please,Don’t look at me like that.

Whatever is Beautiful, That Whatever is You.

I painted the sky with that baby blue I bought from Home Depot.I know you said green, but blue tastes better. (Besides blue reminds me of your brown eyesand you’ll get a poem about that someday.)

The high sun told me “good job” and take the rest of the day off.

I spread out my flannel jacketand laid on the beachdrinking the leftover red.

The action figures were performing by the shore.Today, the Transformers and G.I. Joes did a gothic rendition of Hamlet. When the climax arrivedI forgot who or what was a Hamletbut knew to drink more purple.

I slept and had a dreamwhere you were a mime,feeding me invisibleyellow cream pies.Your subtle silence was beauty.

The sun kissed me to wake as marshmallow puffs blossomed in the skywith construction-papered pines rappelling down

as if the day was a covert operation.

All the action figures left, except for Optimus,wandering, smoking a cigarette,reciting Juliet’s soliloquy for tomorrow.

I sweated a molasses-thick red.The drowning suntucked me in with dusk.

I’ll come home tomorrow. When there is no paint in me andyou’ll get two poems for sure.

Ardentia

Your great-grandfather was a MacDonald,my great-grandfather was a bear. Heavily pelted, downpour.Ireland, a dark forge where farmland is quenched and pounded until it revealsquicksilver strips of irrigation,wrought iron vines of harvest.

I’m absolutely sick,black molasses in my chest.I’ll twine myself into your garlandeven as you disband it.

In their homeland there was hatred between the two.Your great-grandfather hunted mine, and my great-grandfathercoveted his wife. She said“You poor creature, sweet, deranged.”It was twisted. And the fields were a mireof putrid honeydew that season.

Sticky burr, I love to cause you pain because I lovethe way you articulate that pain.I’m a mess, I’ll split open and sprout a forest from my bones. Some comfortto know that you might then usemy wood in bone-fires.

Feuds passed down like genetic code.

Our warring territories, kneecap-shattering potholes.Your great-grandfather finally shot the bear,and then taxidermied it,for his wooden living room was bare, but life wasn’t the same without an enemy.

I’ll make a cave and no bedto lie on. Let me bethe last creature you do these things to.

Verse

I want to be versified, di- versified and di-

vided, self-di- rected and erected, di-

scovered and recovered,di- gested (in jest) and di-

verted, inverted, reverted, di- scussed and converted, di-

rectional and herded, di- sgusted and perverted, di-

minished and refinished and indi- stingusihable from the rest.

I want to be a load-bearing weight, flamingo at the di-

nner table.

BLIND GLASS

BLIND GLASS is a student-run digital poetry magazine at the University of Washington, produced under the auspices of the UW Poetry Brigade. We believe poetry is a unique and necessary creative act that absolves language of the task of sterile, practical communication, and allows words to mean, resound, and associate in peculiar and transformative ways. Our purpose is threefold: (1) to promote and support writers whose work explores impractical, unexpected, and delightful applications of language; (2) to provide a forum for forward-thinking poets to share their work; and (3) to foster a community around adventurous, progressive poetics at the University of Washington.

BLIND GLASS will be published infrequently as a PDF anthology, available online via our Facebook page and elsewhere.

EDITORS

John Calavitta / Jack Chelgren / Will FespermanCali Kopczick / Lauren Loftis / Charlie Lynn

blindglasszine@gmail.com