by Joan Kwon Glass
I write about big questions to avoid the ones I should be asking
like does God exist versus what am I running from
or what is the actual point of marriage versus what am I running from
When I’ve gone quiet, my friend Elinor texts me a mouse emoji, a waving emoji,
yoo-hoo! How is life in your hidey-hole?!
A poem can be a hidey-hole. I open my mouth, swallow myself whole.
There is a poet I admire. No one likes her.
I can’t comprehend a damned thing she writes but I can’t get enough.
Since the first estrangement, it’s been like this, me
asking the wrong questions,
feeding myself to myself.
On Facebook, a well-meaning woman claims that my hyper independence is a trauma response,
In the comments, I type what is the alternative, then erase it.
Instead I type thumbs up emoji.
Blue heart emoji.
::
Joan Kwon Glass is a Korean diasporic author, winner of the 2024 Perugia Press Poetry Prize for her manuscript DAUGHTER OF THREE GONE KINGDOMS (September, 2024) & author of NIGHT SWIM, winner of the Diode Book Prize (Diode Editions, 2022). She serves as editor-in-chief for Harbor Review & as a teacher for several writing centers including Brooklyn Poets, Corporeal & Hudson Valley Writers Center. Joan’s poems have been featured or are forthcoming in Poetry Daily, The Slowdown, Poetry Northwest, Ninth Letter, Rattle, Asian American Writer’s Workshop (The Margins), Tahoma Literary Review, Prairie Schooner, Cherry Tree, Juniper, Salamander & elsewhere. She has been a finalist for the Poetry Northwest Sound Series, the Tupelo Press Helena Whitehill Book Award & the University of Akron Poetry Prize & her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize & Sundress Best of the Net. Joan lives in coastal Connecticut where she is a public school educator.
Image: “New Escape” by Sarah J. Sloat
ID: a collage of a swing on a postcard. The space between the sides of the swing shows a cloudy blue sky.
Psaltery & Lyre 