Editor's note: Below is Mary Meriam's "The Prince of Glass," one of the April winners of the EC monthly contest. It's a lovely poem that uses images of glass in unexpected ways.
He is the prince of shards of glass,
glass bowls with Chinese stamps,
glass crystal balls with legs of brass,
and Tiffany glass lamps.
The prince has chosen to amass
glass window and glass door,
glass shelf and goblet, to surpass
his foes, who might have more.
So when he sees the lovely lass
in glass, he falls in love.
He plinks her coffin on the grass
with his glass-fingered glove.
He hates the forest’s green morass
of trees and shrieking creatures;
with her in glass, they can’t harass
her quintessential features.
The prince pulls out his looking glass
to check his golden locks.
The other things he does,alas,
are unseen from her box.
Mary Meriam's poems are published in Literary Imagination, The New York Times, American Life in Poetry, Measure, Sentence, Think, Light, many other journals, and several anthologies. She is the author of two poetry chapbooks, The Countess of Flatbroke and The Poet's Zodiac, and the editor of Lavender Review.
Altered image by Carravagio.
