by Jane Ellen Glasser
All in by Jane Ellen Glasser
It's #tbt! Enjoy this great one from SWWIM Every Day's archives!
She said goodbye
by Jane Ellen Glasser
when traffic idles
for a red light,
a hand holds up
a cardboard flap
scribbled with child’s print.
When the light turns green,
behind locked doors,
blind eyes
go by, go by.
Those who read
out of work, a family to feed,
sit on their wallets
and stern judgments.
Now and again
a window rolls down.
Now and again
a hand extends to a hand.
Does it matter
what hunger
a handout will feed
to offer relief?
Tell me, who isn’t hurting?
Who isn’t escaping
from something?
Who isn’t a beggar
for a better life?
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Jane Ellen Glasser’s poetry has appeared in journals such as Hudson Review, Southern Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, and Georgia Review. In the past, she reviewed poetry books for the Virginian-Pilot, edited poetry for the Ghent Quarterly and Lady Jane’s Miscellany, and co-founded the nonprofit arts organization and journal New Virginia Review. A first collection of poetry, Naming the Darkness, with an introduction by W. D. Snodgrass, was issued by Road Publishers in 1991. She won the Tampa Review Prize for Poetry 2005 for Light Persists, and The Long Life won the Poetica Publishing Company Chapbook Contest in 2011. The Red Coat (2013), Cracks (2015), In the Shadow of Paradise (2017), and Selected Poems (2019) are available from FutureCycle Press. For more, see www.janeellenglasser.com.
by Jane Ellen Glasser
Shave off that shaggy beard.
You are no one’s grandfather.
Remove the illusion
of white skin.
Admit the lie
that hides
beneath white robes.
Tell the truth.
You did not beget a son.
No one died for our sins.
No one prewrites the script
for our lives.
O we have created you,
fashioned from ego and hubris,
in our own image,
surrounded you with angels
waiting for us
through pearly gates.
Out of the wet tissues
of our need, out of the
sinking clay of our fears,
we whisper prayers in the ear
of a deaf universe.
I am not so foolish.
Redo your curriculum vitae.
Make up a different story.
One I can believe in.
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Jane Ellen Glasser’s poetry has appeared in journals, such as Hudson Review, Southern Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, and Georgia Review. In the past, she reviewed poetry books for the Virginian-Pilot, edited poetry for the Ghent Quarterly and Lady Jane’s Miscellany, and co-founded the nonprofit arts organization and journal New Virginia Review. A first collection of her poetry, Naming the Darkness, with an introduction by W. D. Snodgrass, was issued by Road Publishers in 1991. She won the Tampa Review Prize for Poetry 2005 for Light Persists, and The Long Life won the Poetica Publishing Company Chapbook Contest in 2011. The Red Coat (2013), Cracks (2015), and In the Shadow of Paradise (2017), are all available from FutureCycle Press. Selected Works: 1980-2019 is due out in 2019. See more at www.janeellenglasser.com.
by Jane Ellen Glasser
She said goodbye
to alarm clocks,
appointment books
bank accounts,
cell phones,
welcome mats,
she scrubbed
guilt and regret
from the floorboards,
evicted troublesome
guests, opened
windows and doors
to let her house breathe
till she was clean
as a wind-stripped thicket,
airy as the left-
open spaces of a
Henri Moore sculpture,
the essence of form
(a face, a chest, an arm)
so clearly defined
by being absent.
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