The Tenderness of Glass

Part memoir and part manifesto, The Tenderness of Glass is a book of narrative verse and prose poetry. Each of the book’s six parts is named after a Tibetan Buddhist Bardo. Beginning with the Bardo of Life, we follow the Goddess Palden Lhamo through the underworld to her next chosen body. The body she chooses is the writer’s— transgender and native of the Pacific Islands, raised with abuse in the United States.

In the the Bardo of Dreams we enter the psychiatric hospital; a world where the spirit is distorted by heavy medication. Having “fallen out of love with life,” the narrative is pushed by love and loving in the Bardo of Meditation. From love comes the inspired Bardo of Dying where the reincarnation of the Goddess takes form in the many lives of Queen Búrté. Spiritual luminosity restores the Queen to their rightful throne as the Queen of Tibet. The last part of the book, The Bardo of Becoming, is a vision for the destruction of an apocalyptic future. From the wrath of this destruction, humanity is led to a new nirvana.

Credits: Cover Rafael Santiago, Photo Brett Lindell