The Glacier
Issue Four
Winter 2025

Against futurism

a viola understands me 

better than a windmill does  

a viola gets me right 

down to my metallized core 

which is really a chrysanthemum

The abstract nature of solitude

I keep looking at you there is some
witchcraft left in the mountain or 
mania in the sky—in the abyss that opens 
up to me like a blue knife piercing my skin 
sucking everything out of everything 

I do plagiarize you—your eyes and mouth 
I do want one or the other to define 
what’s so flagrant about my face 
I do want to suckle pigs for you but also 
operate forklifts and lathes maybe a ladle 

for dipping a dipper for cradling 
is it too much to want to cradle you
I hear the word cuddle and think of 
molecules in stars fusing hydrogen to helium 
my mother produces a pistol along with 

her dried flower collection she is up there 
in the red sky controlling the weather 
controlling what the stargazers term their 
lullabies I should press my thumb against 
the temple of the mountain where we are 

increment by increment becoming believable 
again we are normal now I see your table 
set beautiful against pink background 
and think alas we are so normal now with our 
butter knives for spreading and all those 

other things that concern eating each other’s 
brains out I wait for you to feed me 
to cradle me to cuddle me it’s all so logical 
that I would end up being your sheep— 
your sheep in wolf’s clothing

Modern windmills

and then I thought of that phrase: modern windmills 
what it meant I did not know but I saw them 
high up in the firmament starlike and robotic 
I have new teeth now and just like that I was reborn 

I think of you as I look down from the ninth floor 
I think of all the hospital rooms between here and Pacific Grove 
I think of highways sliding into oceans and 
all the rocks we held up to the gods of decay and debris—

would you believe I lived for a while in the armpit of 
the world it was there where I met the trash queen 
and she held out all this hope for a rocket ship 
but all we had were these crazy oversized bottles of wine—

jug wine she called it and we went out into the woods to 
call forth a host of sprites and other listeners to our dreams 
who gave us their eyes to see the kind of death that they 
epitomized so cathartically through the burning of their own hair

Incantation for mermaid

this is a very wonderful 
remembrance or remonstrance 
the bit about frying sausages 
and homelessness makes me
think your hands must be filled 
with loneliness I am anorexic
I am Francis Bacon I eat and 
I eat and I eat and I give no 
indication of my indestructibility 
or my inheritance of thirst 
the aura is never broken 
death only makes it stronger

Bryan D. Price is the author of A Plea for Secular Gods: Elegies (What Books, 2023) His stories and poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Noon Annual, Chicago Quarterly Review, EPOCH, Dialogist, and elsewhere. He lives in San Diego, California.

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