‘Paper Crowns’ by Cassandra de Alba

— Andrew Sargus Klein

Today is Election Day here in the U.S. and I don’t know what else to say other than I hope you’ve voted or plan to vote (if you’re American, of course) and I hope my fellow citizens and are I able to reverse as much of the past two years as we can.

The hate we’ve witnessed is not new. It’s not fresh. It’s been given a new sort of oxygen, yes, but the work to be done right now is the same work of the past several centuries. Undoing systemic racism, sexism, and disenfranchisement. Banishing all phobias to the gutter. One vote at a time.

Cassandra de Alba writes “out of the trees comes the old horror” near of the end of ‘Paper Crowns,’ part of Glass: A Journal of Poetry’s ‘Poet’s Resist’ issue. Her final question—“will you take its hand?”—can be born in either direction: will you guide that horror toward an ending, or will you guide it farther along. There are few choices left.


Glass: A Journal of Poetry