lookingglass
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Through the "Looking Glass," readers are invited to dig deeper into our issues as contributors share reflections on their work. Specifically, "Looking Glass" provides a sort of parlor where authors and artists reveal the genesis of their pieces, as well as provide meta-discursive insight into their textual and visual creative works. Issue 30 Reflections
Read on for reflections by select authors and artists
on the genesis and craft of their pieces in Glassworks and then read the full issue online! |
Millicent Borges Accardi
"Almost Like grief"
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The backstory of “Almost Like Grief” started the way the poem starts. My husband and I were watching the Olympics last summer. We’d signed up for a new streaming service just for the duration, so we could have a little joy in being distracted from politics and my mother in law’s passing. The idea was to tune out the world and celebrate humanity and global connection. The problem was that watching countries compete, together, kept bringing up worry and awkward feelings that we had been trying to suppress. The poem is about grief and how to live with it, how hard it is to talk about, and, as a musician, my mind also traveled to sad chords, to music as a comparison, what unfolds as a sad piece is played, and why grief and joy are so closely related.
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Shelby Leco
"We're Not Better Together"
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The piece, “We’re Not Better Together” took me a very long time to create. This piece is a reflection of my relationship that I had with my partner for the past four years. In the beginning, we loved each other, but as time went on it became more toxic as well as abusive. I started falling out of love with this person, but felt trapped and scared. I had ripped apart the couple in the image. Crumpled them up. I sewed them back together again. Painted over them with black paint, wiped it away. It sat at the bottom of my closet for about a year, until I decided that enough was enough. I couldn’t just ignore what was happening anymore, I needed to step away.
Ultimately I came to the realization that it was unhealthy for me to continue to be in this person’s life. The only way I would grow is through moving on and separation. Represented by the duality in the cactus. |
Dani Putney
"Chekhov"
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I wrote “Chekhov” because I’d been chatting with some friends about guns, gun violence, gun culture in general, etc.—you know, just casual hangout conversation that’s not depressing at all. But it got me thinking about my own experience around guns, and in that moment I remembered a man I’d hooked up with who was a gun-toting conservative. (This is why I don’t like going to Carl’s, my city’s gay dive bar that primarily services older men.) Besides the freedom and America stickers on his truck (yes, specifically a truck), this man carried a gun on him, had a gun in his car, and boasted a whole collection of them at his condo, which I somehow ended up at (I actually do know how I got there—self-sabotage through a deeply internalized trauma response). Though I was desperate in this situation, I wasn’t stupid; I clocked how unsafe I felt, how dangerous this situation could become, how out of my body I was. So, I felt that I had to lie and “fake romance” to squash any gun-related happenings.
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Of course, this triggering town, that is, the experience of getting with a potentially dangerous conservative gun owner, made me think of my history with men who are like this: the machismo, the toxicity, the overt abnegation of a queer identity or anything “feminine.” It made me think of the men I’ve slept with struggling with internalized homophobia, those who grew up to be “men” and nothing else. (And in the West in places like NorCal and northern Nevada where I’m from, there are many of these individuals.) In this sense, the poem emerged as a sort of synthesis of the men I’ve encountered throughout my sexual history. Unfortunate, yes, but also my truth (though there have been some good ones!). I feel that “Chekhov” represents many of my sexual experiences through one poem.
Because of this distillation of sorts, I wanted the piece to be the opening poem in the collection I (have since) finished writing called Half-Off Boys. “Chekhov” provides a wide view of the speaker’s (my) often traumatic, destructive sexual history through a single distinct memory. Further, the title of the poem came to me naturally because of the gun discussion in the piece paired with the fact that “Chekhov” leads into, and almost prophesies, what’s to come for the speaker with other men/experiences in the collection. I love a short but multilayered title.
More personally, however, writing this poem was necessary. A catharsis, yes, but more importantly a quest toward understanding myself and why I find myself in situations such as the one detailed in “Chekhov.” As I was talking to a friend about recently, it’s never really about sex (and I do like writing about gay sexual encounters!); it’s about everything that comes with and exists around it. Sex is simply the tip.
Because of this distillation of sorts, I wanted the piece to be the opening poem in the collection I (have since) finished writing called Half-Off Boys. “Chekhov” provides a wide view of the speaker’s (my) often traumatic, destructive sexual history through a single distinct memory. Further, the title of the poem came to me naturally because of the gun discussion in the piece paired with the fact that “Chekhov” leads into, and almost prophesies, what’s to come for the speaker with other men/experiences in the collection. I love a short but multilayered title.
More personally, however, writing this poem was necessary. A catharsis, yes, but more importantly a quest toward understanding myself and why I find myself in situations such as the one detailed in “Chekhov.” As I was talking to a friend about recently, it’s never really about sex (and I do like writing about gay sexual encounters!); it’s about everything that comes with and exists around it. Sex is simply the tip.
