Zinnia Hansen
Zinnia Hansen is a poet and essayist from the Pacific Northwest, majoring in Classics at the University of Washington. She is a staff writer at the UW Daily where she writes a column, Agora, exploring the experience of reading Plato’s dialogues as a modern college student. She was the 2021-2022 Seattle Youth Poet Laureate, and is the author of Spikenard, 2022, Poetry NW Editions. Her work has been published in various magazines and online publications including Rattle Magazine. She was a finalist in the New York Times Personal Narrative Contest and part of the Hugo House Young Poet’s Cohort.
Ghazal
In the center of the bud, apocalypse is unfolding.
At the edge of myself, pink infinity is unfolding.
The gods sit in the garden, peeling the petals of the sun;
the spiral road to Damascus, Damascus Rose unfolding.
The bestial moon is stained orange with the war it wages
against the sea, reflected light of a battle unfolding.
I want to bury my face in the ruffles of my God’s dress
like I’m smelling a flower, like Virgin Mary unfolding.
There is one good thing to come out of our capital-climate
emergency, fashion industry, inflation unfolding.
I sewed the planet into a couture gown. I stitched Her up
with fire. Everything burned from the inside out, unfolding.
Leonard Cohen is putting Lorca’s poetry to music.
The two of them are dead and still singing a song unfolding.
Now we plant a Zinnia. Once all its petals have fallen,
it will become a sign post pointing to heaven unfolding.
Glass Blowing
I’ve never smoked
a cigarette, but
this is how I imagine it:
I wrap my lips
around the conduit,
and forget my tongue.
It’s like giving a blow-job
to lightning,
or like my mouth
is thunder—the womb,
the cremated ghost
of lightning.
In the Hebrew Bible
soul is not soul,
but nephesh, life-breath.
I leave a little of myself
behind in each exhale,
breathing into
a green snow-globe.
Warm air. Does it cool?
Collapsed star. Collapsed
beginning. Shape
of pure being, shape
of molten shape, balanced
on the tip of a pipe
dream. I remember
when I knew only one psalm.
The glass wakes cold
and forgets its God.