Remnants of Submission

determine the history of glass: panes

of smoothed pebbles on a wooden

frame & where was a woman’s sex before

the ritual of windows/ where was her

name before a windowsill/ an invisible thing

circling tonal value— history’s scenes/ a memoir of

scabs spun into a flattened disc/ a small image in

subdued colors/ how many windows cut from

frames— all day cloudy sea glass

rubs beneath her feet/ a peninsula in pieces

& she is woman before window/ before

sill her tongue sketched with broken bottles—

a petaled head/ decapitated cube

clinking— redacted reflection/

as granular as absence

NAWAL NADER-FRENCH is an MFA candidate at Regis University. Her work has appeared in By&By, Poetry and is forthcoming in Rogue Agent, AMP: Hofstra University’s Digilit Magazine and Bayou Magazine. She tweets @nawalnader.