O:JA&L Poetry: All forms & styles
Sean Wang
SEAM-GLASS
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i
On the atlas a swallow leans, metal-black, pane-bent.
Tail braced to the glass. Dusk scores a pressure line.
Gate augers bite the soaked planks; paper counties pulp in rain,
blue lines running. Not wind, the fan makes that thin whine.
A live coil hums at the latch, warm through the glove.
I fold the crease, keep the seam in my pocket.
This is the turn. Mark it, with the grease pencil.
ii
Shift-change, checkpoint lamps salt the rain.
The roller door chatters; grit seats itself.
Gurney wheels grind, grit in the spokes.
Medics lift only what the tags permit. I tag,
what I can’t lift I sign for and step back.
A hose coughs oil from the dark duct, black tongue
slicking saints on plexi, decals thinning.
I open the wet atlas, halves part on the weld,
by the river—mark this bend as the same crease.
A mother grips her child, gauze sopped and slipping.
The father’s ribs, broken beams, a frame for shadow.
Heat from my torch draws edges to meet, bead, cool, hold.
Dusk pools iron in the water. I keep the seam.
iii
Grubs set like caulk in the jamb, they hold a leak.
No one wants a mouth of insects; still, a gap fills.
Inside the river child’s spine the swallow tears free, rust-sour,
not a bird now, a cutting wheel with wings.
Its flight shears air, iron crying from each quill.
It stoops into the live cable, the black coil,
finds the score, names the fault, and I strike—
glass takes the line, bright sound, the pocketed crease again.
About the writer:
Sean Wang is a poet and PhD student. His recent work appears or is forthcoming in Cerasus Poetry Magazine, Remington Review, Stone Poetry Quarterly, Eunoia Review, and others.
Image: Clocked Out (AI-assisted digital image) by O:JA&L staff creative. 2025. Public domain via Midjourney AI.
OJAL Art Incorporated, publishing since 2017 as OPEN: Journal of Arts & Letters (O:JA&L) and its imprints Buttonhook Press, HOT BUTTON PRESS Contemporary Issues, and HIGH BUTTON PRESS Contemporary Art, supports writers and artists worldwide.
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