Spring 2023

glassworks
a publication of Rowan University’s Master of Arts in Writing

featuring
transitional spaces
reclaiming painful narratives
nature and grieving
 Cover art: “Cosmic Bloom” EDITOR IN CHIEF
by Carella Keil Katie Budris

The staff of Glassworks magazine would like to thank MANAGING EDITOR

Rowan University’s Master of Arts in Writing Program Cate Romano
and Rowan University’s Writing Arts Department
ASSOCIATE EDITORS
Garret Castle
Cover Design & Layout: Katie Budris Stephanie Ciecierski
Skyla Everwine
Kay Fratello
Glassworks is available both digitally and in print. Rebecca Green
See our website for details: RowanGlassworks.org
FICTION EDITORS
Courtney R. Hall
Glassworks accepts literary poetry, fiction, nonfiction, Daniel Hewitt
craft essays, art, photography, short video/film & audio. Cat Reed
See submission guidelines: RowanGlassworks.org Javis Sisco

NONFICTION EDITORS
Glassworks is a publication of Rowan University’s Ellie Cameron
Master of Arts in Writing Graduate Program Caitlin Hertzberg
Frank E. Penick, Jr.
Correspondence can be sent to: Amanda Smera
Glassworks
c/o Katie Budris POETRY EDITORS
Rowan University Rebecca Green
260 Victoria Street Iliana Pineda
Glassboro, NJ 08028 Nyds L. Rivera
Paige Stressman
E-mail: GlassworksMagazine@rowan.edu
MEDIA EDITORS
Copyright © 2023 Glassworks Lesley George
Bryce Morris
Glassworks maintains First North American S. E. Roberts
Serial Rights for publication in our journal and First
Electronic Rights for reproduction of works in
Glassworks and/or Glassworks-affiliated materials.
All other rights remain with the artist.
 glassworks
Spring 2023
Issue Twenty-Six

MASTER OF ARTS IN WRITING PROGRAM

ROWAN UNIVERSITY
Issue 26 | Table of Contents
Art
E. O. Connors, Balconies, Italy | 47
Feather, Ireland | 53
Glass on Windowsill, Ireland | 25
Catherine Edgerton, 13th Amendment | 10
Predators | 34
Gerburg Garmann, Hibiscus and Happy Hoops | 44
Unlikely Sisters | 4
Carella Keil, The Birth of Phoenix | 30
Cosmic Bloom | cover

Fiction
Faith McNaughton, In the Bathroom Mirror | 5
Kathryn Reese, The Principal and the Sea | 32

Nonfiction
Joanna Acevedo, Prosopagnosia | 48
Chelsea M. Carney, Teeth | 40
Ted McLoof, Future Girl | 14
Poetry
Devon Brock, Static | 45
A Thrift Store Cup with Blue Lotus | 46
Amber Lee Carpenter, Collective Memory | 29
Rachael Inciarte, Desert Dogs | 36
Karina Jha, Mice in a Matchbox | 8
Sean Madden, Frank Sinatra’s Favorite Color | 31
Mary Makofske, What Would Grow in Hitler’s Garden? | 9
Claire Hamner Matturro, Trespassing | 12
Reese Menefee, Missing Us During a Downpour in Louisiana | 52
Kathleen McGookey, Small Words | 28
Sam Moe, Vanilla Smoke as Ceremony | 38
Judith H. Montgomery, Elegy for a Burnt House | 55
L is for | 54
Annette Sisson, Flight Season | 26
Jacob Stratman, from The Shell of Things | 3
The History of Glassworks

The tradition of glassworking and the history of Rowan University

are deeply intertwined. South Jersey was a natural location for glass
production—the sandy soil provided the perfect medium, while plen-
tiful oak trees fueled the fires. Glassboro, home of Rowan University,
was founded as “Glass Works in the Woods” in 1779. The primacy of
artistry, a deep pride in individual craftsmanship, and the willingness
to explore and test conventional boundaries to create exciting new
work is part of the continuing spirit inspiring Glassworks magazine.

glassworks 2
from The Shell of Things
Jacob Stratman

The dogwood and redbud blooms in March

are what he misses—the speckled hope
among the resting bare branches, the whites

and reds among the bared brown hills, crags,

and valleys of his home, but he only notices,
considers, believes this longing now

on this walk around this lake in the woods

between these hills staring at the fainted
purples he doesn’t know, cannot name,

winking at him, these trees, these azaleas

he’s later told, in the sunlight, cutting
through the pines and the few oaks resting bare

here, the same as home as far as his eyes

will allow him to look up the hill,
but it’s those cherry blossoms in their celebrity

a week or so away from crowding the stage

when he will join the masses walking
along the streets in the parks to see

the planted city trees, the planned beauty,

picnics under the blooms, taking pictures,
posing, chasing the flowers in the wind

with his sons, and then he will forget

these purple dots, these woods blinking in color
like he will forget the dogwoods

and redbuds again when the cherry blossoms

arrive, when the strangeness overwhelms,
envelopes, and invites him again.

glassworks 3
Unlikely Sisters
Gerburg Garmann

glassworks 4
In the Bathroom Mirror
Faith McNaughton
For the slightest moment, you
pause and think of Sarah—the smirk
on her face, her mouth curled over
new braces, puffing out her tight up-
per lip when she spouted: I didn’t even
get my haircut at the haircut place. You
were drawn in, her side bangs chic
and jagged, like the pointy-toed high
heels your mom wears on nights
when she comes home late and
nights when she doesn’t come back
at all. Sarah flipped her hair as if she
wanted to see you watch it waterfall
behind her shoulders, bragging: I fell
asleep with my gum in my mouth and it got
all up in my hair. My mom made me cut
it clean off.
Clean off.
You imagine Sarah’s wavy hair
escaping the grasp of the big
scissors, the kitchen kind, and how
she must’ve glowed under the warm
bathroom lights, the bundle of lem-
on juice-kissed hair on the ground,
leaving behind bangs that looked
just like the girls in your sister’s mag-
azines. You imagine Sarah, beautiful
and free, pushing her bangs back
into bobby pins when she plays soc-
cer, or letting them flow in front of
her long eyelashes, still outrunning
you blindly.
You think about Sarah, her hair,
and how lucky she is not to have the
haircut you get from the place on
Main Street, how the woman with
the lazy eye and the bright pink lip
gloss dribbling down her chin chops
your pin-straight brown hair just
below your shoulders—no layers,
no face framing, the same trim each
time. In the salon chair, you would
survey yourself in the fluorescent
light dressed mirror. You would
touch your rounded cheeks with
your fingers, watching how they
look bagged down and weighty un-
der the lines of your hair, how your
forehead seems to overwhelm them,
a shiny dinner plate. You would
argue with your mom, please let me
grow my hair long, or even, please
let me chop it to my ears, please let me
wear it in two braids, or in a noose around
my neck.
Your mom always says, you think
so much that you don’t think at all,
when you flip through the books
at the salon, grasping onto every
haircut on each glossy, laminated
page. You imagine how the gym air
conditioning would feel if you had
something like a bob, short pieces
barely flying behind you, too stubby
to tie up, sweat wicked off your neck
by the wind. You would walk—no,
glide, like Sarah when she entered
the classroom in the morning, like
she knew how she looked, how she
looked good, like the paparazzi was
dancing and flashing from the array
of desks.
glassworks 5
 When you saw her like that, all
golden and glowing, like the wom-
en on TV selling jewelry, their hands
pawing diamonds at their throats,
their skin like glazed ceramic—
seeing Sarah like that, with everyone
around her, and her new bangs like
feathers—you noticed the purple
scissors in your desk. How they were
brand new, right-out-of-the-package.
How they were sharp as tongues.
out the color wheel at Sarah’s feet
and she knew, deep in her beating
heart, to pick out the perfect shade.
She has blonde eyebrows that never
look angry, never furrow to create
wrinkles in her forehead, the kind
that you get during math tests or in
the dark. She wears dresses to school
that flow out behind her at recess.
She runs past all of the boys and
never stops to catch her breath.

“Staring back at you are your eyebrows that fade at the

tail, your deranged hair (like a rat’s nest, your mom says
when she helps you drag a hairbrush through the tangles
before school), your crooked teeth, each tooth elbowing
the other for a place in your mouth. ”
As the bustle of Sarah and her The bathroom is cold and the
fans faded out to recess, you found only sound is some faint chattering
yourself in the bathroom, scissors beyond the window. You wonder if
tucked in your sleeve like you’ve it’s Sarah talking outside. You won-
seen other girls do before. Staring der if she’s gossiping or drilling over
in the mirror. Counting the hand- homework.
prints across it from bottom to top. And then you are in a memory:
Staring back at you are your eye- the kind tinted with blurriness and
brows that fade at the tail, your bits-and-pieces, the kind you have of
deranged hair (like a rat’s nest, your wide and smiling faces staring down
mom says when she helps you drag a at you, of being smaller than you are
hairbrush through the tangles before now, so small in fact that the world
school), your crooked teeth, each around you towers like the trees you
tooth elbowing the other for a place drive past on car trips, sky-reaching
in your mouth. and ancient.
Sarah’s braces are purple—like In this moment, you wait,
cool lilac, like the orthodontist laid stretched across the living room
glassworks 6
couch, dressed in Christmas paja-
mas. The days are getting longer.
You watch the sun drop slowly as
your tired eyes, how the shining
rays on the front door dim, and the
dust caught in their path fade into
the shadows. Gaze connected to
the hands of a ticking wall clock,
you jolt at the sound of the jiggling
doorknob, and sit up as your mom
stumbles in. She promptly kicks off
her high heels and shakes off her
black blazer before climbing onto
the couch next to you, carefully sip-
ping the water you left out for her.
As she falls asleep with your legs
across her lap and the news channel
blurring into white noise, you twist
and comb her hair with your tiny fin-
gers. You watch her gentle waves fall
as you let them go, and comb and
braid and twist them again.
For the first time, you see her face.
Really see it. You look like her, this
tired woman. You see your stringy
hair in the soft strands curled in
your hand. You see it in the curve
of her nose. Her forehead like yours,
a gentle moon. Your likeness bleeds
through the woman laying across the
couch. In the noise and the waiting, it
is completely still and peaceful. You
sleep next to each other until the sun
rises again, her hair still wrapped like
a bandage around your hand.
And then, like magic or waking
up, the memory leaves you. You
see your face, your mother’s face, in
the bathroom mirror. You wonder
about Sarah, wonder about her own
mother. You think about change,
Faith McNaughton | In the Bathroom Mirror
like how the days grow in early
spring and braces yank teeth into
straight lines.
You feel your tightening grip
on the scissors, almost strangling
the purple handles, so perfect in
your hand, to the point of break-
ing. In your other hand, you
hold a generous section of hair
in front of your face. The walls
of the bathroom seem to swirl
and fold in on you, and for just
one moment, your running mind
goes blank.
It’s sunny out, you can see it
in the light from the window.
The days are getting longer. You
hear girls outside, on their way in
from recess. They are laughing.
In a single moment, you
breathe in the beauty and just as
quickly breathe out, with a swift
and heavy chop.
glassworks 7
Mice in a Matchbox
Karina Jha

They don’t save the children with your face, my mother says,
Braiding rivers into my hair.
There are too many rows of crayon drawings to burn,
Too many buildings to crumble and devour like pryaniki,
Too much twisting smoke to breathe in with the smell
Of Babushka’s blini on the stove.

Last night, I saw a little girl lying on my own kitchen floor.

Maybe it was my sister with her rosy apple-cheeks,
Maybe she wasn’t dead at all,
But I know the children were left under my playground,
The ones with our face.
The ones that lived in my childhood,
Now curled around each other like mice.
So terribly quiet,
Like mice.

glassworks 8
What Would Grow in Hitler’s
Garden?
Mary Makofske

Not what you think—no

foxglove, monkshood, chokecherry,
oleander, deadly nightshade, angel’s trumpet.
No hemlock. No yew.

A dozen varieties of tulip

flaunting bright chalices,
then peonies with pastel
ruffled skirts. Roses
scarlet, blush, canary yellow,
purest white, but only the most
fragrant, intoxicating,
and daisies, snapdragons,
a full palette of colors
delighting the eye of the would-be
painter who cedes to them the task
of filling the world with color.

He revels in excess, extravagance,

bounty, but tolerates no
wildflower or weed.
His gardeners uproot
whatever does not fit his plan.

The secret to making the garden

rich, he believes, is ashes.

But who can control the urge to life?

See how they break through soil, those hands
thrusting up to reach for light.

glassworks 9
13th Amendment
Catherine Edgerton

glassworks 10
glassworks 11
Trespassing
Claire Hamner Matturro

Seeking the solitude of owls

and the cover of ancient trees
we came to build a house
deep in the thick woods
as if we were royalty
whose desires deserved
more than any other’s needs.

Built small with good intentions,

still the house uprooted
live oak, loblolly, and sweetgums.
Jessamine vines which once curled
their trunks rotted in slash piles
wasting like snags that never hosted
birds or grubs on their resting logs.

Our feet crushed lives we’d meant

to cherish—the tender trilliums
whose petals and bracts splashed
vivid across dark leafmeal and
prairie phlox with nodding purple
blooms easing up sloping loam
like shy children holding hands.

Green lynx spiders who scurried

under curled brown leaves and
clubmosses were not always
fast enough to escape.
Even maligned deer ticks
knocked from fronds of dogfennel
fell prey to our clueless trod.

glassworks 12
We pray the woods will one day
reclaim our house. Already tenacious
yellow jessamine crawls up the far wall,
like some winking peeping Tom
looking for an open window, its tendrils
ready to take back the space
it once owned completely.

glassworks 13
Future Girl
Ted McLoof
When Molly Miller’s brother died
of AIDS her senior year of high
school, she became convinced she
could see the future. Her parents
had split under the stress of his
death and everyone assumed her
belief was a sort of psychosis due
to this wave of trauma, but she
insisted it wasn’t. She missed a
month of school during which she
didn’t leave her house. Upon her
return, our school let her miss what-
ever classes she wanted. Mrs. Miller,
who’d always been kind of a hippy,
brought her to a psychic. Mr. Miller
encouraged her to focus her energy
on college applications. He’d moved
to Wyckoff, the next town over, and
took Molly with him, on the grounds
that it was a wealthier town and the
school could afford a special grief
counselor to help convince Molly
she was imagining things. We all felt
bad for her so no one made jokes,
not to her face anyway, but of course
no one believed her either.
Except Andy. Andy Ryan had
been her boyfriend since middle
school and accepted her claims with-
out judgment. I tried to do the same,
but it was hard. She was telling me
about how it worked, future-seeing,
one night as the three of us sat in
the Wyckoff Dairy Queen parking
lot. “Time isn’t a line,” she told me,
drawing a line with her finger to
glassworks 14
demonstrate, “it doesn’t have, like, a
beginning, middle, and end. Yester-
day didn’t happen ‘before’ today. It
just, you know, happened.”
Andy nodded. I was a year behind
them, a junior, and felt lucky to hang
out with them. So I tried my best:
“So it’s next year right now?”
She shook her head, but warmly.
She knew what she was saying was
odd. “You’re just applying the wrong
prepositions to events. They don’t
happen in an order. Look at your
clothes,” she said, and pointed at
them. “Did your shirt happen before
your pants? Did your shoes happen
before your socks? That’s not the
relationship they have to each other.
They just exist at the same time.”
I looked at my shirt. “I bought
this yesterday,” I said.
I was worried she’d think I was
making fun of her, which I only
kind of was. But she and Andy
laughed. “You’re a pisser,” he said,
and rubbed my head.
I’d borrowed my sister Emily’s car
to drive them around. This was a
routine we’d gotten into: pick them
up, ice cream, cruise down the high-
way, home. At first I’d been cautious
to broach the subject of Future Girl.
But eventually she’d volunteered the
subject herself—“You can ask me,
it’s OK,”—and since then it took up
a lot of our discussions. “So, like,”
I said, “when exactly in the future
are you from?”
Andy perked his head up, as
though he wanted to know the
answer to this himself but never
thought to ask it. “It’s tough to say,”
she said. “I can’t tell whether I’m
from the future or can just see it.
I just have memories, except all of
my memories haven’t happened yet.
Does that make sense?”
“Sure,” said Andy. I was grateful
for the save. “Are we still together?”
he asked.
Andy’s dad owned Ryan Auto
Parts in town and Molly’s parents
were rich, from family money. This
was partly why her parents never
liked him, and they liked him even
less when they found out he in-
dulged her delusions. Mr. and Mrs.
Ryan thought of the Millers as
holier-than-thou muckety mucks
and took the occasion of Molly’s
new reputation as Future Girl to
forbid them from seeing each oth-
er anymore. That’s where I came in.
Andy failed English and ended up

“‘Time isn’t a line,’ she told me, drawing a line with her
finger to demonstrate, ‘it doesn’t have, like, a beginning,
middle, and end. Yesterday didn’t happen before today.
It just, you know, happened.’ ”
She wrapped her arms around his taking it again with the juniors, and
neck. “Of course. We’re living in when we got paired up for a class
New York, in a loft. I’m an actress.” project we became fast friends. He
“A movie star,” he said. was a popular if not-so-bright jock,
She shook her head. “Theater,” great with cars and easy to get along
which made sense—Molly’d always with. But his friends, like everyone
been the lead in the plays through- else, found Molly a little spooky and
out high school, and read Ibsen and he couldn’t drive his own car to her
Inge and Pirandello in her spare dad’s house for obvious reasons, so
time. “You’re there too, Teddy,” when he found out I had access to
she said to me, though she was wheels he roped me into being their
still looking into Andy’s eyes. I felt unofficial chauffeur.
flattered and almost asked what “You sound like you’re their pet,”
I was doing in the future until she Emily said to me the next day as
said, “And the weird thing is, so’s my I drove her to the train station. She’d
brother.” moved back in with Mom and me
~ after college a few months prior and
glassworks 15
took the Path to Manhattan for her
job in the city. It was my job to drive
her to work, and I got to keep her
car each day.
“I’m not their pet,” I said. “I’m
their friend. They’re cool.”
“Do they swing? Maybe they’ll
proposition you into a threeway,”
she said. She put her makeup on in
the passenger mirror and I deliber-
ately jerked the car to the right so
she’d smear lipstick on her teeth.
“Can’t I just like these people?”
“Like whoever you want. Just
be careful.”
“Careful of what?”
“I’m just looking out for you.
You’re prone to hero worship.”
Ever since college, she’d been
dropping terms like that all the time.
Blasé. Bourgeoisie. Hero worship.
Oedipal complexes. It was irritat-
ing, and I probably didn’t help my
case by saying, “You should see
them together. I think they’ll be
together forever.”
I kept watching the road but
could hear her eyes roll when she
said, “Christ.”
“They will. She can—” I had the
good sense to stop before I said
See the future. Emily wasn’t always
like this—she’d made it all the way
through college still dating her high
school boyfriend, but he dumped
her just before graduation and her
plans to move across the country
with him fell through, hence living
back with me and Mom and hence
too, I guess, her newfound cynicism.
glassworks 16
Still, she was a lot smarter than me
and I had concerns about my own
possibly dangerous hero worship. So
I said, “I guess it is a little weird.”
“She’s going through trauma,”
Emily said. I couldn’t remember
telling her about Molly’s brother but
I guess word traveled fast through
town. “Andy’s familiar. And it sounds
like he loves her. And obviously they
like that you’re their biggest fan.”
We were pulling up to the station
but I didn’t want to end the con-
versation just yet. We parked. She
grabbed her stuff to get out and I
thought, as I did each morning when
I dropped her off, of our father,
whom Mom dropped here so often
with us in the car as kids. “Do you
ever miss him?” I asked her.
She stood outside the car now,
looking through her bag to make
sure she had everything, her focus
not really on me. “Huh? Who?”
Satisfied she had what she needed,
she zipped her bag, looked up at me
and, in response to whatever face
I was making, figured it out. “Not
really—is this where you want to
have this conversation? In the thirty
seconds before I catch the train?” I
shrugged. The whistle blew closer.
But she relented. “Tell your bud-
dies you’re busy tomorrow night
and we’ll do something. Just the two
of us.”
~
Emily and I had never been close.
She was seven years older than me
and in her last two years of high
school—those years when Mom
and Dad were throwing plates at
each other’s heads, when things got
really bad—she’d basically moved
in with Eric, her boyfriend at the
time. They went to college together
and lived there year-round, so she’d
missed the fallout. I could see why
she wouldn’t miss Dad. Moving back
in with Mom and me had clearly hit
her as a defeat, her escape plan back-
firing, and though she never talked
about it I could tell she and Eric had
had a messy breakup. She’d come
home from work and go straight
to her room and stay in there until
morning. I don’t know when she ate.
Her TV blasted Nick at Nite reruns
in the deep sleep hours so I don’t
know when she slept, either.
But I’d been thinking a lot about
her and Eric lately, not of their
breakup but of the time I’d seen
them together most, back when she
was in high school. They’d been
voted class couple in the yearbook.
Mom and Dad had taken to sleeping
separately by then, Mom in a sleep-
ing bag on the floor in my room,
so I tried not to go to bed until I
absolutely had to. And occasion-
ally Emily and Eric would take me
to Blockbuster and we’d watch
movies until late, me on the floor, the
two of them sharing a blanket and
throwing popcorn in each other’s
mouths to catch. Eric would ask me
what I thought of the movies we’d
watch. Emily would compliment my
answers and say I was perceptive
for a ten year old. I would have
Ted McLoof | Future Girl
voted them class couple myself
if anyone asked. And I thought
of them a lot these days with
Molly and Andy, feeling for
the first time since then like a
sidekick or a mascot or some-
thing, something this special
unit of people actually wanted
hanging around.
I was thinking about it that
night as Andy and I drove to
Molly’s. “Everlong” by the Foo
Fighters played from my sister’s
speakers—the acoustic version,
which Andy insisted we play
over and over whenever we
drove around. I got the feeling
he thought there were hidden
messages in it. “I really like the
gold hat,” Andy was saying. “I
think I get it now.”
We’d finished The Great
Gatsby in class the week before,
but I suspected Andy hadn’t got-
ten further than the epigraph:
Then wear the gold hat, if that will
move her. If you can bounce high,
bounce for her too, until she cry, “Lov-
er! Gold-hatted, high-bouncing lover, I
must have you!” We were approach-
ing Molly’s dad’s neighborhood
in Wyckoff so he slumped down
as always, to hide, but kept
talking at a normal volume. “Do
what you gotta do, right? Even if
it’s something stupid.”
“I don’t know that that’s the
point of The Great Gatsby,” I said.
“I mean, it’s not this great love
glassworks 17
story or anything. He dies without
Daisy ever fully loving him.”
We pulled up to Molly’s and there
was an awkward silence in the car. I
looked down at Andy, on the floor in
the backseat, his shoulders slumped.
“What?” I asked.
He looked at me, crestfallen.
“He dies?”
“Sorry,” I said. “Spoiler alert,
I guess.”
He looked at me through his fin-
gers, smiling. “Guess I should’ve
read past the title page.”
“A rock is just that which
we call a rock, what we
decided to call it. But what
if you decided to call it
something else? Does that
”
make it something else?
We parked on a mountain in the
Ramapo Valley Reservation, a spot
that overlooked a lake soundtracked
by crickets’ and owls’ chirps and
hoots. Molly and Andy loved it from
the first time I brought them. I was
never outdoorsy but Dad took me
there as a kid once, told me he went
up there when he wanted to be alone,
and had never shown anyone else
the spot, not even Mom or Emily.
I’d been there dozens of times over
glassworks 18
the years, brought girls to make out
or groups of friends to do whip-its
and shots. But Molly and Andy were
different. They didn’t drink or do
drugs and they just liked the peace
of the place. All they ever wanted to
do was talk. That night, Molly told
us to sit Indian-style in a circle. She
brought a candle but it kept blowing
out, so I turned the headlights on
and they shone on us like a spotlight.
“Do we need, like, a Ouija board or
anything?” I asked.
She looked at me skeptically. “You
wanted to know how it works,” she
said. “The future.”
Andy and I were facing the head-
lights head on, Molly backlit by
them, so all I could really see was
her silhouette. Her brother had been
a small guy, with a frame roughly the
size of Molly’s and a high-pitched
voice, and the effect of her robbed
of the features that distinguished
the two of them spooked me. I
wanted to be supportive, but I also
wanted to be honest. “I have a hard
time with this stuff,” I told her. “I’m
trying to buy into it but I guess I’m
not there.”
“OK,” she said. “Let’s try this.
This is an exercise we used to do
in my acting class. It’s supposed to
help you get out of your head.” She
picked something up off the ground
and handed it to me. I couldn’t see
it until she’d put it in my hand: a
shiny black rock, the size and shape
of chewed-up gum. “What is that,”
she asked.
 It felt like a trick question.
“A rock.”
“How’d you know it’s a rock?”
“Because I’m holding it,” I said.
“I’m looking at it.”
“But how do you know what
you’re looking at and holding is a
rock? How do you know what you
call a rock is a rock?”
I looked to Andy for help. His
eyes were closed and he nodded his
head, like some tune we couldn’t
hear was playing through invisible
headphones. I looked back down
at the rock and said, to it instead of
Molly, “Because that’s what every-
one calls it.”
She leaned toward me and patted
my knee. It startled me. “Exactly,”
she said. “A rock is just that which
we call a rock, what we decided to
call it. But what if you decided to call
it something else? Does that make it
something else?” For my only friend
who didn’t smoke pot, she sure talk-
ed like a stoner. I almost said that
out loud but didn’t need to, because
it was like she read my mind when
she said, “You think it’s weird, it’s
OK. I thought it was too. Close your
eyes.”
The headlights gave her a little
halo of fog in the aftermath of that
evening’s rain and I couldn’t take
looking at this rock anymore, so I
complied. I did my best—she could
deny it, but I knew Molly was going
through stuff I didn’t understand—
and tried to let go of my skepticism
as she spoke. Clear your mind, she said,
but I opened one eye to look at
Ted McLoof | Future Girl
them both; Andy still bobbed
his head, eyes shut; Molly’s face
was a calm blank, like she’d
already slipped into the deep
meditation she now attempted
to lull me into. I closed both eyes
again and tried. You’re not on this
mountain, she said, but I was of
course—I could feel the ground
beneath me and hear the crickets
and owls, so I said, Where am I
then? and she said, You’re not any-
where, you’re everywhere and nowhere.
There’s no such thing as ‘here,’ what do
you see—don’t tell me, don’t say it out
loud, just communicate it to yourself in
your head, and I said, I thought I was
supposed to be getting out of my head,
and she said, Shh, just tell your-
self what you see, but what I saw
was myself sitting like an idiot,
I couldn’t stop picturing what I
looked like, or what I’d look like
to an outsider; I pictured Emily
watching this and rolling her eyes
and I couldn’t not agree with
her. Molly stopped talking alto-
gether. I looked at the Rorschach
of weird light patterns that
kaleidoscope in front of your
eyes when you close them real
tight. I didn’t see anything until I
opened my eyes. Andy and Molly
were holding hands, looking at
me.
“Molly was in a play,” Andy
said, responding to a question I
hadn’t heard asked. “Something
old-timey, she had a corset on.”
glassworks 19
She squeezed his hand and put her
head on his shoulder.
It was my turn to talk next but
I didn’t know what to say. I hadn’t
seen the future and felt like a fraud.
“See?” she said. “That’s why I want-
ed to do this. You’re special. I knew
you’d get it.”
~ “I wouldn’t call what you do driv-
“You know I knew her brother,
right?” said Emily when she took
me out the next night for pizza.
I should have known that—our
town was tiny and everyone knew
everyone, but the news took me by
surprise anyway.
“What was he like?” I asked. I
didn’t want her to see my curiosity so
I looked at my slice, patted it down
with napkins to degrease it.
“Funny kid,” she said. “Kinda
goofy. Used to carry the Village
Voice around with him everywhere.
I thought it was weird at the time but
in hindsight it was pretty cool.” The
TV behind her played a rerun of
Who’s the Boss. Mona said something
about how fuckable Tony is and I let
the sound of the canned audience
cheering fill a beat. “How’s Molly
taking it?”
I winced, unsure how much to tell
her. “She doesn’t seem too bad, con-
sidering. She’s told me some stuff
that made it hard for her.”
“Like?”
“She told me what he looked like
at the end. Like a cadaver already.”
“Jesus,” she said. “She shouldn’t
be telling you things like that.”
glassworks 20
“Why not?” It seemed unfair that
all I’d done was answer her question
and she already objected.
“Because,” she bit her stromboli.
“You’re a kid. You don’t need to
think about that stuff.”
“I’m not a kid. I’m sixteen. I
can drive.”
ing,” she said, and I threw a balled-
up napkin at her head.
I didn’t want to switch topics yet,
though. Emily could be a pain in the
ass and she seemed depressed as hell
lately, but she also had her feet on
the ground. A lot of vague threads
pulled at my brain lately, like a car
radio stuck between two stations, the
score for the ball game laid over a
Zeppelin tune but too soft to hear
either so you didn’t know which
teams or what song. “Anyway,” I
started, carefully. “She says he’s
not dead.”
She stopped mid-chew, wiped her
mouth slowly, kept her eyes on me,
like I myself was a ghost. “What are
you talking about?”
I stirred my drink with my straw,
stared at it as I talked. “She just has
these visions of the fu—” I glanced
at her horrified look and pushed for-
ward as quickly as I could, “she has
these visions of the future and she
says her brother’s part of them and
don’t worry,” I held my palm up to
her to stop her from interrupting,
“don’t worry, I know it’s nuts and
before you start psychoanalyzing,
she knows it’s weird too. I just…”
 She looked at me, chewing, un-
blinking. It was just like Emily not to
throw her two cents in exactly when
I wanted her to fill the silence. I took
a bite and pretended there was too
much in my mouth to keep talking,
but she didn’t buy it. “It’s just what?”
I shrugged.
“I don’t respond to shrugging.
I refuse to let my little brother be-
come like all the other men I know.
You obviously have something
you want to talk about. Talk. Use
your words.”
I swallowed. “I’ve just been think-
ing that, like, is it so crazy, so impos-
sible that someone can see the future
or whatever? It feels…wrong to be so
certain and just write it off. Isn’t it at
least possible?”
Her forehead scrunched, in con-
templation or mock-contemplation,
I wasn’t sure which but was grateful
either way. “You mean like chaos
theory? Parallel universes? Alternate
timelines? Quantum physics?”
“Sure,” I said. I had absolutely
no clue what she was talking about.
All I’d meant was the gut feeling
Molly had. But if there were credi-
ble schools of thought on this she’d
picked up in college, I wasn’t about
to shoot it down. I lit a cigarette.
“You smoke too much,” she said.
Which was funny because actually
I’d been cutting down since hanging
out with Molly and Andy.
“I just mean people see their
future all the time, right? They plan
for their futures.”
“Planning for it and seeing it
Ted McLoof | Future Girl
isn’t the same, bud.”
“But it is sometimes, isn’t it?
Like, when people start a rela-
tionship, say. They plan on stay-
ing together for their whole fu-
ture. And they can’t literally see
what the world will look like fifty
years later, but they can work at
it and make sure they’re still to-
gether. They have control.”
“Nobody has control of that.
What are you talking about?”
Behind her head on the TV,
Angela and Tony kissed, and
the audience went wild with
applause. “Nobody?” I asked.
Her face dropped, and I knew
the look, like whatever private
conversation she’d had with
herself had been right all along.
“See—this is what I was really
worried about.”
“What?”
“I didn’t think you hanging out
with Molly during her grieving
process was inherently a bad idea.
But I knew this is where your lit-
tle mind would go. I knew that
would somehow become about
this.” I took a drag to look casual
but really I was nonplussed—
another of Emily’s favorite
words. She waved the smoke out
of her face. “You know what
Dad said to me before he left?
He told me you can’t count on
anybody. I was with Eric then
and asked him whether another
person can fulfill everything you
glassworks 21
need and he said, ‘No. We expect too
much of our partners. We expect
too much of people in general be-
cause people are fickle and you can’t
count on them.’”
“That’s what he said?”
“That’s what he said.”
“And then he peaced out on us.”
She lifted her eyebrows. “You
gotta hand it to Dad for teaching
through demonstration.”
I couldn’t help but laugh. “You
think he was right?”
“I think he was right that no one
can fulfill everything you need, sure.
But I think you can count on peo-
ple to give you what they can, if they
give a shit. I know what you’re going
through, kiddo. You’re hitting the
age where you realize that people let
other people down. And it sucks.”
I stubbed my cigarette in the
ashtray and took out another one.
“You’re only twenty-three. Stop
acting so world-weary.”
She took the cigarette from my
hand and placed it in her mouth, lit
it with a match from the table, the
Brother’s Pizza label on the match-
box unchanged through all these
years, one of the few constants I
knew anymore. “Just be a normal
kid while you still can. You only have
a couple years left.” I wished to God
she hadn’t said that.
~ it in and be sixteen. But my heart
She dropped me off at a party
Melissa Torres was throwing. The
party was OK, which is to say it
was like most other parties I’d been
glassworks 22
to throughout school: a group of
kids sat around a TV playing Boy
Meets World, taking shots every time
Mr. Feeny doled out advice; Gia
DiPinto and Luke Morris broke up
in the kitchen, over some infrac-
tion Luke had committed before I
showed up; a senior girl chatted up
a nervous sophomore guy on the
couch while he peeled the label off
“No. We expect too
much of our partners.
We expect too much of
people in general because
people are fickle and you
can’t count on them. ”
his beer trying to figure out what to
say; Andrew Sinclair did a keg stand
in the backyard; bong smoke cloud-
ed the screened-in front porch; you
could hear the ceiling creak and the
muffled sound of two people hav-
ing sex in one of the upstairs bed-
rooms; two guys in Grateful Dead
t-shirts stared at the family dog and
said, “What’s he thinking? Can you
hear it?”
I tried to do as Emily said: soak
wasn’t in it, the crowd felt differ-
ent. I was about to leave when I felt
a hand on my shoulder, and turned
around to see Andy.
 “Hey,” he said. “What are you do-
ing here?” It had been a while since
I’d seen Andy at a house party and
it was weird, a foreign context, like
when you see a teacher at a store in
the mall. But he looked as at home
here as he did everywhere. I was the
one feeling out of place.
I shrugged. “Emily dropped me
off after dinner. She took the car.”
He smiled. Andy had a great smile.
It was like a gift he gave to certain
people. He’d smiled at me the ex-
act same way the day he decided to
be my friend. “Let’s go in the front
yard, it’s hard to hear in here.”
He said Molly was at the library
up the street, but that she was meet-
ing him after, and then he asked
what was wrong. I wasn’t sure what
he meant until I realized I’d lit a
cigarette, even though I rarely
smoked in front of him. “Noth-
ing,” I said. “Emily can just be a
downer sometimes. It’s my fault—
I told her about Molly’s, you know,
future thing. And she as usual over
intellectualized it. She doesn’t think
it’s real.”
I took a drag. The sound of the
party inside swirled around us. Luke
and Gia made out now in the win-
dow. It wasn’t until I blew out the
smoke that I realized Andy hadn’t
responded, and when I looked at
his face he wasn’t smiling. “I mean,”
he said. “It’s not real. You do know
that, right?”
I thought I’d heard him wrong.
“Huh?”
“Molly’s thing about the fu-
Ted McLoof | Future Girl
ture. You know it’s just her going
through stuff, right?”
I shook my head. “Wait—
what the hell are you talking
about? You said you saw it too.”
He held his palms up and
said, “Well yeah. Her broth-
er died. I’m trying to help her
through it.”
It had rained earlier and the
muddy front lawn felt unsta-
ble beneath my feet, like quick-
sand. I shifted my weight to get
my bearings but it wasn’t work-
ing. “What about her being in
that play?”
“What play?”
“You said the two of you were
gonna live together. In a loft in
the city. She was wearing old-
timey clothes.” I wasn’t sure on
the details but I knew I had them
being together right, at least.
He nodded toward the street
and without thinking I followed
him, threw my cigarette at the
house. The hill leading up to
the library, which I’d walked
a million times, felt suddenly
insurmountable. “I’ve gotta take
over my dad’s shop when I grad-
uate,” he said. “And Molly’s got
too much going for her, I can’t
make her stay here with me. She
hasn’t told her parents, but she
has an audition in Greenwich
Village next week. She’s taking
the bus in. I guess we can’t get
you to drive us around forever.”
glassworks 23
He laughed, but I couldn’t see any- remained in the air but were dispers-
thing funny in what he said. Emily ing, moonlight breaking through like
was probably right—I smoked too some werewolf movie. We walked
much, because halfway up the hill, in to the graveyard at Nativity Church,
front of Eastern Christian Church, where Molly’s brother was buried,
I ran out of breath. Andy patted and sat next to his plot wordlessly.
my back as I coughed. “Easy, pal,” On the headstone, she placed a pic-
he said. ture of the two of them when they
I righted myself and asked, “So— were kids: Molly on a swing in a
are you breaking up? What’s gonna Little Mermaid bathing suit, her
happen next?” brother pushing her and laughing,
He seemed confused by the ques- a terrier I’d never met at their feet.
tion, as though I were asking who’d Molly and Andy held hands, and she
win the next World Series. “Who reached for mine.
knows,” he said. “Thanks for coming,” she said.
I felt angry with him. With both
of them. These people who’d made
me drive them around, who’d adopt-
ed me, who’d tried so hard to con-
vince me of unreasonable things—
how was Who knows a good enough
answer for them?
As though he’d heard the ques-
tion, Andy said, “We love each oth-
er right now.” We approached the
library, where Molly stood at the
front door waving, a stack of
books in her hand. She was wearing
Andy’s football jersey, so large on
her it looked like a muumuu. He lit
up when he saw her. “You have to
have a little faith in people,” he said.
~
We didn’t do much that night.
We didn’t talk about Molly’s audi-
tion or acknowledge there was an
impending goodbye, or that our
drives together wouldn’t last much
longer. We didn’t need to; it was in
the air. Clouds from that day’s rain
glassworks 24
Glass on Windowsill, Ireland
E. O. Connors

glassworks 25
Flight Season
Annette Sisson

after “Gulf Coast Highway,” by Hooker, Flowers, & Griffith

I.

Somewhere in Texas a blackbird
glides across a long flat
highway. Flocks of bluebonnets
purple beneath its fleeting shadow.
It recedes into a wide horizon
of rusting oil wells.
This morning my Dallas cousin
reports her condition—recurrence
of cancer, tubes, her son
suctioning mucus from her lungs.
She celebrates being home,
alive. Her voice shimmers,
the cadence and trill of birdsong.
I try to muster lyrics
to blend with her grace notes—
flinch as I picture her springing
for feather and bone, winging
into the dark eye of flight.

II.

Yesterday I bent for shampoo
in the shower, wailed for my husband,
my lower back wrenched.
He rushed in to help,
reported blackbirds cluttering
the tops of the Japanese maples.
The day folded like paper—
curved wings, forked
tails, origami birds.


glassworks 26
III.

My father’s eyes wither
like cut blossoms. I watch
his world, his body, shrink—
my hands digging for roots,
tubers in soft loam.
My children trundle boxes
to apartments, babies to homes
in distant cities. I visit,
stretch the rounded hours
thin and long, lift
the toddler’s hand to trace
my cheekbone, jawline, then
her own. At bath time I towel
water from her skin, repeat:
bath, lake, river, rain.
Already blackbirds flit
like specks of cobweb across my cornea,
dart away when I focus.

glassworks 27
Small Words
Kathleen McGookey

On Cherry Valley Road, there’s a catalpa with a heart-shaped hole in its side,
where the trunk branched and half tore away in the storm. You could stand
on tiptoe and hide a measuring cup and a spinning wheel in there. I pass
it twice a day, taking my kids to school, but today, I can’t stop and guess a
hundred names for love. Not even one. A mass of white petals litters the
ground. Some days I glance at the jagged hole and wonder if it’s growing
teeth. Some days, while the kids argue, I think about dinner. About the bats
living in the eave and the ladder. The lost language arts book, surely dam-
aged in the storm. My daughter’s teacher wants her students to stop using
perfectly good small words like little and pretty, in favor of more complicated
ones. She’s made the classroom bulletin board into a graveyard, miniature
headstones marking each discarded word. I see her point and disagree: after
dinner, the dog and I walk in the dark, while the wind shakes a little more
rain from the trees.

glassworks 28
Collective Memory
Amber Lee Carpenter

We dive in unison. Our adolescent bodies slice through

shallow, cool blue water [three feet to be exact]. A range of

body types––ectomorphs endomorphs mesomorphs––practice

proper form: the body begins in a crouched position, hesitates,

then leaps into the pool like Superman. Vinyl flags hang
immobile in this summer heat; they point to the pool floor where

a boy named Edward waits for someone, anyone, to notice him.

The rest of us resurface, swimsuits now sodden & heavy, our bodies

ready for sandwiches & sunkissed towels. Question: If memory swims

the length of a pool [twenty-five yards to be exact], how many laps

can memory take before it drowns? Answer: Not one of us knows.

Paramedics strap Edward to a spinal board & laboriously lift his

body out of the pool. On the count of three, this incident will become
a collective memory: one mississippi, two mississippi, three mississippi.

glassworks 29
The Birth of Phoenix
Carella Keil

glassworks 30
Frank Sinatra’s Favorite Color
Sean Madden

was not cool and primary, contrary to what our collective

free association might lead us to believe; contrary to those
bright azure irises,
the inspiration behind that famous old moniker.

Frank apparently preferred the warm and secondary—

the color of the armchair at Jilly’s Saloon,
the leather one brought out special whenever
the Chairman popped in for drinks. Still,

blue is what he was, when you consider not

only the music—the smoky, languid ballads
soaked in city rain, where Stordahl’s strings swell
like a heavy-hearted breast, and horns
slurp up the dregs of a whiskey-dark romance—
but the man behind the microphone, lonely as
Cheever, chronically dependent on wee-hours
barstool talk, the boozy
camaraderie of kindred souls to
stave off the solitude of sleep.

It’s a wonder, then, armchair aside,

that after the loss of his most kindred:
bum-blinkered Jilly, burned to death
in a car crash, his body identifiable only
by his jewelry—it’s a wonder bereaved

Frank would have favored

a color as fiery as orange.

glassworks 31
The Principal and the Sea
Kathryn Reese
You straighten your tie. Tap your
fingers on your leg, breathing in
the scent of basketballs, sweat, and
a mix of aerosol antiperspirants.
When you step on stage, you still
have to remind yourself to feel your
feet, look at a point just above their
heads, reach into your own chest
to gather your voice. You still be-
gin with this seasick belly, after so
many years.
After all these years the kids are
still rocking their chairs back, bal-
ancing on two legs. The kids are still
chewing gum. The girls still wear
their skirts too short and their shirts
too low. You have given this talk so
many times that, once begun, you
only notice half the words. Responsi-
bility. The Reputation of the School.
Call their behavior “appalling”
because that word tastes so round
and sour. List the recent breaches.
It no longer matters if the breaches
are recent or not, list them anyway,
using your stare to tip those chairs
down to four legs, to silence those
whispers and to stop those insolent
jaws, gum under their tongues.
Now you have their attention,
turn to Consequences. Your eyes
roam the room. There—those girls.
The dark haired one with a dragon
charm on a string tucked beneath
her collar. She flicked her fingers,
opened her hand. You have had her
glassworks 32
in your office three times this week
already. Watch.
The golden haired girl beside
her, feigning attention. Uniform
correct, shirt buttoned all the way,
skirt of appropriate length. The
quiet one. The one called upon when
a good influence is required to show
a new student around the school.
Your speech doesn’t pause as you
watch her stealthily tear a page from
her book. You allow her to fold it,
using her nails to form sharp,
precise creases.
You wait. You watch her hand
reach across, into the dark-haired
girl’s lap, linger just moments too
long. That precise moment when
hand on hand enfolds that paper—
crack her name like a whip from
your mouth.
She jumps, blushes, panic across
her face. Name the dark-haired one,
too, call both forward for public
reprimand. One saunters, one creeps.
One glares back defiant as you rant,
the other stares at your shoes. See
how close they stand. Sometimes
as they fidget the backs of their
hands touch.
Demand that crisply folded paper.
Unseal it. Two hands have
written—you have your proof,
your weapon. Return the note with
a demand:
 Read.
Read it aloud.
Before the whole school. Now. Read your confession of love, your intimate betrayal, your
plans to crash the weekend party. Read. Golden-hair first.

You hand back the paper—too late, notice her hand grasp the other girl’s
as they turn. Too late notice her chin rise and her feet turn roots. Too late
notice they smile, the energy surging, not from one to the other but sum-
moned by both—
A deep inhale. Parted lips and eyes that rest closed, then—

dust motes dance in sunlight, turn to fairies that war for gossamer thrones, chalk dust
deserts quenched by teardrop rains flow rivers pigmented, pink, blue, yellow, acorns thrown
in gutters sprout, root, crack open these halls and the crows that feast on lunch scraps
gather to sing…

Your hand is at your tie, rocking it loose. You cannot breathe and swallow
this magic, you cannot speak to stop them. Dark-hair takes the page, grips
her charm, reads:

and the forest is filled with bears and fish that climb out of the stream and sing, mush-
rooms rise from the rich, dark loam bearing gifts for the butterfly king, a storm arises,
raining stardust and snowflakes that catch in the canopy…

They pause, breathe. Only then do you notice the sobs of weeping school-
boys. You have melted to your knees, your tie discarded.

and the sea carves mermaids and kelpies from rock, and driftwood forms bones and
seaweed makes flesh, these scarecrows make fire and dance with the tide—

You have kicked off your shoes, you notice now your mismatched socks,
your sleeves rolled askew, you notice yourself swoon…still they go on:

silver gulls cry: your sadness, your sadness—

summon you inward, call your soul deep…

Your mismatched socks,

your abandoned tie.
Your jacket strangely scented with salt.
Your flesh surrendered to a faraway sea.
glassworks 33
Predators
Catherine Edgerton

glassworks 34
glassworks 35
Desert Dogs
Rachael Inciarte

the neighborhood dogs are barking

and no one thinks
to quiet them

this is the west

where everything is at least half
wild

maybe it’s the coyotes that descend

from the mountains to prowl
encouraging their madness

the dogs carve troughs through the sand

arroyos in miniature
which they flood with urine

behind thistled walls you can hear relentless panting

their breaths burnt
a small dust storm in every yard—

you cannot walk this block a stranger—

outside our Bichon circles the garden

cloaks himself in desert dust
tries becoming unrecognizable

but we know him

when he waits by his dish
to be fed supper

the way our dog paces

how hard he pulls at the leash
sometimes

glassworks 36
it’s hard to believe he dreams of running
while he is curled between my knees for warmth
but isn’t that what all hearts want

to revel beneath the bright sun

howl into the moon’s pocked face and return
to find there is a soft bed waiting

glassworks 37
Vanilla Smoke as Ceremony
Sam Moe

Young and haunted, you get kicked out of the house

so you leave for the forest at dusk, station wagon
a faded blue, its interior smelling of old cologne
and smoke, you left vanilla cloves on the dashboard
and the sun burns through each of your confessions.

I wait, I pretend to be guarded when really, my love

is an extravagance, and I’m jealous of your exes whose
pear and cherry lips once touched yours. We’re dancers
and we’re living off family meals from the restaurant

you’re more charming than I am, you smoke with chefs

on the back porch during storms, you know the perfect
wines to order, using a fresh pen to lie about prices, you
always keep jars of spices in your trunk, one Tuesday when

we couldn’t sleep you called me, a few beers in, so close

to drunk, and softly asked what ingredients I would use
to make the perfect compound butter. My jaw hurts from
biting my cheeks, holding back my quirks and smirks, your

knife chest is heavy, and I can barely get it over the threshold.
Once inside, you take the guest room, I light the burners
and put on tea for us, I wonder why I can’t quiet my mind
for a few seasons at a time, my head is full of chatty bones

whose skeleton owner is a feast of embedded lies. Soon

you’re in my kitchen, wearing your striped work pants,
laughing at my half-melted candles, the milk saucer my mother
bought for me, shaped like a cat, and I laugh back but believe

me when I say you could never hold my heart in your hands

in a way that makes sense, you could never tune lullabies
towards porch birds, this is our green and stamped paradise,
this is my lip, bleeding from where I bite back your name, this

glassworks 38
is the fridge which knows the curve of my back, the tiles who
have all memorized my calves and thighs, the windows know
the way I arch my spine when we’re on the phone in the dark,
you are in my heated workspace, and I want to press my fraught

lip against the wall, each time the floor creaks I feel my breath
shake out its linen-blue feathers, it’s almost time for the thrush
and crush of dinner, already I’m following you through my door.

glassworks 39
Teeth
Chelsea M. Carney
“Love has teeth; they bite;
the wounds never close.”
-Stephen King, The Body
Your childhood bedroom is
painted sky blue, but in the dark,
black of night, you can only see the
shadows dancing on the walls and the
moonlight in ribbons as it cuts
through your white, plastic blinds.
You’re curled up under that cheap,
scratchy comforter of your twin
bed, when your eyes click open like
a doll’s—Mom is standing by the
window. She’s facing away from you,
and you can only see the back of
her head, her curls tight against her
scalp, that old terry cloth robe she
wears, loose around her shoulders.
It’s quiet in the room except for the
nasally gasp of her breathing.
“Mom?” You rub your eyes, but
she doesn’t say anything. Instead she
pokes two of her fingers through
the blinds and you realize there are
red and blue lights pulsing across
the street. “Mom,” you say again.
“What’s going on?”
She whips her head back, a sharp
gesture, and you notice her eyes
seem dark, too, chaotic. You pull
the glitter-pink blanket up to your
shoulders. With your feet, you search
for the fat, white cat that likes to
sleep near your knees.
“Go back to bed,” Mom bites.
glassworks 40
Then turns again to face the window.
You nod because what else can
you do?
~
It’s August. Through the break in
your nearly closed door, you watch
Mom chase your brothers, the three
of them zig-zagging down the beige,
carpeted hallway of your house.
Above Mom’s head, she’s gripping
a cordless phone and you can hear
that dull beep like the phone’s been
disconnected too long. One of your
brothers is drunk. You can tell by
the way he slurs his words, how he
staggers, and because you’ve been
dragged to A.A. meetings your whole
life, you know what drunk looks like.
He’s laughing, but you don’t under-
stand why. It’s deep and reverberates
through the house reminding you of
Christmas mornings and pancake
Sundays, only it feels out of place in
this context. You’re not sure where
your other brother went, but Mom
is screaming and the sound is high-
pitched and curdled.
Words are thrown across the
living room, along with a lamp and
some metal coasters. She says some-
thing about her van being gone,
how they’ll be taken away if they
don’t return it! All you can hear is
that laughing though, that dull beep,
and then abruptly, the sound of a
thud. You realize you’ve been here
before and fling the door open to see
your mom holding her cheek. Your
other brother lurches backwards, his
blond hair wet with sweat, his eyes
frenzied. You curl your tiny hands
into fists, your teddy bear nightgown
still too big for you, and pound on
his thigh because it’s the only thing
you can reach. You scream at him
not to hurt Mom. He’s gentle with
you; he says you don’t understand.
You see the red and blue lights out
the window, the ones you’re used to
by now.
~ watched your dad pack a suitcase.
In summer, you like to read
about monsters. Halfway through
your favorite book, you realize you
want a snack. You search for your
bookmark but can’t find it, and the
librarian at school has reprimanded
you more than once for dog-earing
the pages. You remember you were
the square plastic edge of the book-
mark and its soft, pink tassel. Your
hand hits something cold and metal,
sharp. Carefully you coil your hand
around the edge and pull. Surprised,
you drop a knife, the blade wid-
er than your forearm. You can see
what looks like hair on the blade
and a smattering of blood. Quickly
you shove it back under the bed and
feel the warm glow of the afternoon
turn blue and icy.
~
When you were three, you’d
You’d screamed for him to stay,
flung yourself across his ankles, but
he’d still slid open the gold chain
lock, pushed the flimsy frame of
the screen door, and after getting
into his orange Jeep, reversed sharp-
ly out of the driveway. You missed
tugging on his dark mustache, how it

“You curl your tiny hands into fists, your teddy bear
nightgown still too big for you, and pound on his thigh
because it’s the only thing you can reach. ”
reading last in Mom’s room, so you seemed thicker than the silky fringe
open her door and sneak into the of his black hair. You missed his
empty bedroom in the middle of the smell, that Old Spice aftershave you
afternoon and drop to your knees to once doused yourself with, crying
look under her bed. Under the bed is as it burned your delicate, new skin.
dark and you don’t have a flashlight, How his gold wedding band always
so you reach your hand out and feel seemed too tight for his short, thick
through the thick, brown carpet for fingers. Today he’s outside waiting
glassworks 41
for you. You already know you won’t
see him though. That the closest
he’ll be is through that thick glass
window and the billowy pink fabric
of the curtains.
Mom is outside screaming some-
thing. Her hand smacks the hood
of his car. She lunges toward the
driver’s side and shoves her fingers
through the half open frame.
your legs. You’re crying. You ha-
ven’t stopped crying since Mom
whipped a u-turn, drove what felt
like eighty miles an hour, and parked
sideways in the lot. Your wrists
burned as she dragged you from
the car to the front door of num-
ber 18 and pounded on the metal,
her hands, you’re sure, in splinters
from the force. Your dad’s girlfriend

“Burnt crisp with embarrassment, your tears scorch—

like Dad’s aftershave on your cheeks—and you run to
hide, the bougainvillea plants the closest you find to
solitude. ”
He’s already reversing. The drive- answers. She’s kind and soft, with
way’s short and the window you’re dark feathered hair and a daughter
watching him from faces it. Jerking a few years older than you. Mom
his head left and right, you realize… starts screaming. The words don’t
he’s searching for you. You take a even matter anymore.
step closer, as close as you can— Burnt crisp with embarrass-
the smell of windex sharp in your ment, your tears scorch—like Dad’s
nose because Mom would never let aftershave on your cheeks—and you
glass get dirty, just relationships— run to hide, the bougainvillea plants
and for one second, you catch his the closest you find to solitude. The
eyes. He half smiles at you. girlfriend pokes her head out the
He still leaves you alone in the door and looks for you. Her eyes are
house, with her. gentle and she smiles.
~ “Are you okay?”
It’s October and you’re hid- Mom doesn’t like that. She hurls
ing in the bushes of that old flames at the woman, then sharply
apartment complex Dad lives in. turns and grips your wrists. You go
Your back is pressed against the limp as she drags you back to the car
stucco siding, and the thorns from the because you know it will hurt less
bougainvillea bushes are pricking that way.
glassworks 42
 Mom’s still screaming, just at

Chelsea M. Carney | Teeth

you now.
“I am your mother! Do you
understand me?”
You nod because what else can
you do?

glassworks 43
Hibiscus and Happy Hoops
Gerburg Garmann

glassworks 44
Static
Devon Brock

Between stations, where every voice ever,

where every ud and trumpet, where every
drum and rattle and harpsichord resolve
into a hiss—this is music. And the big bang’s
orange hum. And a lily’s slow peal. Oh,
those murmuring starlings swell and plume
over the fens and I am rapt, one eye
to the road, one ear to the radio
where a voice leans out and whispers,
“I’m sure it was you, I’m sure it was you
I heard in the fluid, in the heartbeat,
in the womb.”

glassworks 45
A Thrift Store Cup with Blue Lotus
Devon Brock

Sometimes the weight of it is too much,

the ten thousand mornings I cup between my palms
those ten thousand times your lips touched its rim.

I do not know you. But I know the blue lotus

at the bottom of the well as one more hot grief
passes between us and rolls across my tongue.

I know the shape of your hands

and what a warm stomach becomes
when a sunken flower reveals itself,

so blue and sudden. I know that as a body cools,

the emptiness we find must soon be filled

again on each and countless morning,

again, on every lotus drowned.

glassworks 46
Balconies, Italy
E. O. Connors

glassworks
glassworks47
47
Prosopagnosia
Joanna Acevedo
Late August, I channel Marilyn,
then Anne. Recently, I have been
quitting. Jobs, friendships, smoking.
All my plants have died. I can’t stop
listening to Beyoncé; her pain is my
pain, my Instagram posts are vague
and obscure. Tension headaches.
How do I explain? The red of my
mouth around my gap teeth, watch-
ing my face on the FaceTime screen,
the million different ways I love you.
It’s hard to never be enough, when I
am so much. It’s hard to simply be.
So my father is cancer free.
The doctors aren’t using the word
“remission,” they’re simply saying
he’s done with treatment. Clean CAT
scan. He makes jokes about bringing
our cat, Chickpea, to the scan, de-
spite the fact that she’ll hiss and bite
at anyone who even tries to pick her
up. We can’t even take her to the vet.
He gets his chemo port removed; I
pick him up from the hospital. Read
a tweet on the train: “Even I don’t
know who the ‘you’ in my poems is.”
Close my phone, my eyes, listen to
the hum of the IRT.
There is no language for the after:
for when I use the words “cancer
scare” when I really mean “he had
cancer.” It wasn’t a scare, he real-
ly had it. It really tore into me like
a knife. “He had cancer, and I was
scared,” I tell my mother on the
phone, half-joking, half-serious. My
glassworks 48
mother says she feels torn between
us: me bipolar, him sick. “Imagine
being one of us,” my father says, and
wins the Pain Olympics for the day.
It’s not a competition, but it is.
“Don’t let anyone tell you
your work is too confessional,” a
woman poet tells me at a poetry
reading, mid-August. No one has
ever told me that before, and I
have to wonder—is she telling me
my work is too confessional? I’ve
just read a poem about my pseudo-
suicide attempt, from July, and she is
looking me dead in the eye like she’s
telling me a secret. “You hear me?
You’re working in a tradition. Anne,
Sylvia, Robert.” She says these names
like they are old friends. I point out
that I have an Anne Sexton line
tattooed on my chest.
I feel like I’ve lost my ability to
relate to people. I recognize people
I know everywhere, the reverse of
face blindness—everyone looks like
someone I know. I’m always running
after someone, saying, “Hey, do you
remember—” They never do. They
always look at me, a blank expres-
sion on their faces in the blue light
of their phones. They turn away.
The difference between sick and
well, I’m learning, can be a few
days, a few hours, a few moments.
It’s a slim line, and I walk it like the
edge of a blade. I’m not well; I am
hungover, I am anxious, I am
permanently terrified—but I am not
crazy. Not like I was. The ship has
docked in the port after the storm.
So I schedule my Botox appoint-
ments—the cure for my migraines.
I joke that it’ll help with the line
that has etched itself precisely in my
forehead. Lately I have started to
look my age, which is twenty-five;
not a calamity, but a reminder that
time passes. I’m no longer the
nineteen-year-old whirlwind I once
was, courting death, crazier than hell.
No, I am older and wiser now, and
I am almost afraid of what comes
next, be it good or bad, because I am
not prepared for more grief.
~ now, and I am almost
Be happy! my partner texts me on
Friday afternoon, out of the blue.
I’m not unhappy, I text back. I am
absentmindedly applying to jobs.
Trying not to think about the future.
Avoiding work. I have a million oth-
er things I could be doing, but I don’t
do any of them; I am paralyzed.
Instead I online shop for things
I can’t afford, text my bestie, get a
headache from looking at the com-
puter screen too long, watch Top
Chef. Take naps.
I’m not unhappy. I’m not happy,
either, but who is? I put Sriracha on
everything, even fruit. Tell myself
I’m going back to my Mexican roots.
I can’t stop saying “vibes,” and “love
that for you,” even when I’m not be-
ing ironic. My personality has been
reduced to a series of anecdotes.
Recently have been running out
of things to say to people. I’ve been
having the feeling like I don’t know
what to say in normal conversa-
tions, like everything is just going
over my head. Conversations seem
to be about topics I know nothing
about—movies, music, politics—
and I can’t keep up. I haven’t seen
Blade Runner in years. “I’ve read the
book,” I tell people when they bring
it up. But no one wants to talk about
Phillip K. Dick. No one wants to
talk to me.
“No, I am older and wiser
afraid of what comes next,
be it good or bad, because
I am not prepared for
”
more grief.
My father has become obsessed
with food, after weeks of not being
able to eat because of the chemo.
He takes me out to lunch, where we
talk about nothing, and everything.
My job, his retirement. Our family
history. We get Mexican food, laugh
at the irony. “Do you think they
know we’re Mexican?” I ask. He
laughs. In this way we are father and
daughter, peas in a pod. I don’t know
how to wear my skin any other way.
glassworks 49
 Everything in my life has become
humorous in some way—everything
is a joke. My partner jokes that ev-
erything I wear has some degree of
irony to it. The big hoop earrings,
the hokey t-shirts. I’ve become such
a manifestation of myself that I’m
not even myself anymore. I’m a
caricature. Everything becomes sur-
real, like a migraine headache, sim-
mering under the surface. I go out
of body. I watch myself, or someone
who looks like me, talk to my friends,
make funny comments, perform my
life. She is not me. We are not the
same. Then I close my eyes. When
I wake up, there’s nothing. Just me,
staring at a blank wall.
~ just in case, you never know what
like the face of a stranger. Often, I
feel my partner is an extension of
myself, like a tentacle or a phantom
limb, but then he does things that I
would never do. Goes dove hunting.
Buys a Civil War era shotgun. Drinks
a pint of whiskey. I forget that we’re
not the same person, our boundar-
ies blurring and smearing, and then
suddenly I remember, like a child
coming out of sleep.
So I get better. Not all the way
better, but better enough that I can
go to work, see my friends, spend
time alone without actively hurting
myself. My doctor wants me on
a more robust bipolar cocktail;
preventative measures, he says,

“Prosopagnosia—face blindness, the inability to recognize

faces, even ones you’ve met before. I can’t recognize my
own face in the mirror, but I recognize everyone else. ”
Actually, the problem is that could happen. My current cock-
I’m self-obsessed. I can’t see past tail is quite a few pills, but I relent,
my own windshield. Couldn’t stop and play medication guinea pig with
thinking about my own birthday him anyway. I feel like a bug under a
while my father had surgery for his microscope, desperate and wanting
cancer. Yes it’s true, I’m Icarus. When to scurry away, little legs churning.
I turned twenty-five, I spent my day He means well. I don’t know how
in a hospital room. Lately, I’ve been to do this, to be a good sick person.
underdeveloped. Not processing my When sick, I am cranky, frustrated,
own emotions. Drowning in work, bitter, well-educated. I am snappy to
or maybe simply drowning. answer and quick to dismiss. I am
His face is the one I recognize the arrogant. In short, I am everything
most easily, but sometimes, it looks that I am while not sick, but also
glassworks 50
batshit crazy to boot.

Joanna Acevedo | Prosopagnosia

In a way, I am resentful. Some
people are only sick for a period of
time, like my father. He was sick and
now he is well. I will always be sick,
and even though I will have periods
of wellness, the sickness will still lin-
ger. It will always be a part of me.
I will never be cured.
Prosopagnosia—face blindness, the
inability to recognize faces, even
ones you’ve met before. I can’t rec-
ognize my own face in the mirror,
but I recognize everyone else—
potential friends, lovers, enemies.
Everyone seems like an old friend.
I want to chase them down the
street, ask them questions. At least
once a day, I question if I’ve slept
with this or that stranger, and only
don’t remember. Everyone is recog-
nizable. And when I really do r
ecognize someone, from TV or,
more recently, from a fashion blog I
read in the mid-2000s, they greet me
with gusto. Maybe I really do know
everyone. Maybe they’re just waiting
to know me.

glassworks 51
Missing Us During a Downpour in
Louisiana
Reese Menefee

I admire the storm’s mossed backdrop, mug of lukewarm

coffee in my hands, humidity lolling against my skin.
I’ve crowded my countertops with matches and flashlights,
lit every candle for when the power goes out.

You called me a collector once and I’ll admit it,
I collect love like postage stamps, stuff
my pockets with hailstones and voicemails.
I want to text you:
Meet me at our storm-wrecked house.
I’ll catch guttered rain in my mouth
until I’m all rust and water, all hurricane.

You and I are as mold-eaten
as our old bedroom, a portrait of lightning
reflecting every cracked window.

I’ll replace your indifference with quiet
mornings and the sound of stale
cereal going soggy. I’ll press my ear
to the faucet and listen for saltwater,
the wash of your voice seeping through my pipes.

I’ll fall asleep on the couch, and remember
how our mildewed mattress hugged the curb,
sopped puddles, held us together.

glassworks 52
Feather, Ireland
E. O. Connors

glassworks 53
L is for
Judith H. Montgomery

Laura, wrapped in April green—

her stay against winter invading spring
in fevered shivers, unfurling its viral spume.

And L is for loss. Cell phone stilled,

words spilling from her lips—an old friend
who has brought her self to a halt, stopping

breath and pulse to exit a world

too ready for budburst. And L for
linger, a second friend wishing only to live,

but whose crackling lungs cannot

draw breath, who gasps white-sheeted,
deep in an ICU, breath sticking, stuck. L is for

love. And for Laura, who must re-

cast her day, her life, abandon ink and pen,
to comfort and curb, pack this fresh wound—

mourning—into the thinnest box,

to manage, to empty herself, to muster
enough to meet each new need. Who must be

the light, burning and burning the oil

of her self, called again to take up the necessary
summons of love.

glassworks 54
Elegy for a Burnt House
Judith H. Montgomery

This purple fist of lavender—remnant

of my hard-won high desert garden.
Last vestige of the home licked black

by accidental flame, its fragile cedar

shell unraftered, windows blasted loose
by heat. Once, this lavender shimmered

in its blue vase just above white porcelain,

kitchen sink where I rinsed tomatoes,
basil, lettuce heads. It must be cluttered

now with ash, burnt Ponderosa needles,

slop of curdled river water. And what
else? Our cloud-blue bedroom, hung

smoke-stunk, the north deck sunk

under twisted strips of roof ? Sole relic,
the chimney’s stolid lava bricks. What

else survived the night’s long red roar?

The pink crabapples? And the white?
Do they spill still into ravished air,

spared by hoses pumping rivers to hiss

the blaze? We left so much behind.
I raise the vase, its saved stems, purple

blooms, color of half-mourning, into

surviving light. The stiff stalks gleam
beneath a year’s dust, as though

distant ash-aftermath had blown here

to remind us of what’s burnt, lost.
All things come to pass.

glassworks 55
 Art
E. O. Connors is a writer and award-winning photographer living
in Connecticut. She has a master’s degree in English Literature and
Creative Writing from Harvard University. Her writing has appeared
in The Furious Gazelle, Lowestoft Chronicle, Rutgers College Quarterly, and
Dungeon Magazine. To read her humor and memoir, or to purchase fine
art prints from her online gallery, visit: www.eoconnors.com

Catherine Edgerton has been inking, layering and stitching mixed-

media records in hand-bound books since age fourteen. Her main areas
of focus are race, the sea, and spiritual dis-ease in a sick society. In
expansion of this work, Edgerton invites lens-shifting through stained
glass. She uses transparent objects—bug wings, film slides, brake lights—
to build kaleidoscopes and TV lanterns, juxtaposing the mundane with
play to create surreal visions of patterns and light. Visit her website for
more: www.cedgerton.com

Gerburg Garmann, a native of Germany, is a former professor

of Global Languages and Cross-Cultural Studies at the University
of Indianapolis, Indiana, and is now fully concentrating on the arts.
Her scholarly publications appear in English, German, and French in
international journals. Her artwork and poems have appeared in various
magazines and anthologies around the world. Her mission is to inspire
joyful resilience. She specializes in creating art for women. For more
information, visit: www.gerburggarmann.com

Carella Keil is a writer and digital artist who splits her time between
the ethereal world of dreams, and Toronto, Canada, depending on the
weather. Her art has appeared recently or is forthcoming in Columbia
Journal, Skyie Magazine, Wrongdoing Magazine, The Storms, Burningword,
Wander, Existere, Chestnut Review, Door is a Jar, Grub Street, Sheepshead
Review, Moss Puppy, Free Verse Revolution, Troublemaker Firestarter, and
Vocivia. Follow her at: instagram.com/catalogue.of.dreams

glassworks 56
 Contributors | Issue 26
Fiction
Faith McNaughton is a student at Rutgers University - New
Brunswick, studying English, sociology, and creative writing. Her
favorite study and writing partner is Luna, her dog, who resides in
South Jersey. Faith enjoys pulling from themes of adolescence,
womanhood, and queerness in her writing.

Kathryn Reese lives in Adelaide, South Australia. She works in

medical science. Her writing explores themes of nature, spirituality,
myth and the possibility of shape shift. Her poems are published in
Neoperennial Press Heroines Anthology, Hayden’s Ferry Review, and Yellow
Arrow Journal.

Nonfiction
Joanna Acevedo (she/they) is the Pushcart nominated author of
the chapbooks List of Demands (Bottlecap Press, 2022) and Outtakes
(WTAW Press, forthcoming) and the books The Pathophysiology of
Longing (Black Centipede Press, 2020) and Unsaid Things (Flexible Press,
2021). She received her MFA in Fiction from New York University
in 2021.

Chelsea M. Carney is a novelist, essayist, and freelance writer,

specializing in narrative essay, young adult, and adult fiction. She has
a BA from The New School and is currently working on an MFA in
creative writing. Her work can be found in Elpha, Glassworks Magazine,
and the 12th Street Journal.

Ted McLoof teaches English at the University of Arizona. His work

has appeared in Minnesota Review, Bellevue Literary Review, Monkeybicycle,
Hobart, DIAGRAM, Kenyon Review, Louisville Review, Ninth Letter, Los
Angeles Review, and elsewhere. His debut collection, ANHEDONIA,
is available from Finishing Line Press; you can find it at Amazon
or tedmcloof.com, and can follow him on all sorts of social media:
@tedmcloof

glassworks 57
 Poetry
Devon Brock is a line cook and poet living in South Dakota with his
wife and dog. Find him online at: www.sweetandbittergreens.com

Amber Lee Carpenter earned an MFA from Columbia College

Chicago. Her essays and hybrid works have appeared in publications
that include sPARKLE & bLINK, Sinister Wisdom, Two Hawks Quarterly,
and riverSedge. She currently lives in the Bay Area with her wife, two
dogs, and cat. Visit her website: https://amberleecarpenter.com

Rachael Inciarte is the author of the chapbook What Kind of Seed Made
You (Finishing Line Press, 2021), which received a 2022 Eric Hoffer
Award Honorable Mention. They live in California, with family.

Karina Jha is a literary enthusiast from Northampton, Massachusetts.

She is currently working towards a BA in Writing, Literature, and
Publishing at Emerson College in Boston. Her work is centered around
themes of femininity, multi-cultural identity, and the melding of fantasy
and reality. She has won multiple awards for poetry, short story, and flash
fiction. To see more of her work, visit: ipivonia.wixsite.com/portfolio

Sean Madden works for the California Community Colleges’

Chancellor’s Office. He holds an MFA from the University of Kentucky.
The Emerson Review nominated him for a Pushcart Prize in 2022.
Other poems, stories, and essays have appeared in Copper Nickel, Slant,
Waccamaw, The Nonconformist, Sport Literate, Small Print, The Los Angeles
Review, The John Updike Review, and Hawaii Pacific Review. He lives in the
Sierra Nevada foothills with his wife and sons and is currently at work
on a novel and a story collection. Visit him at: seanmadden.org

Mary Makofske’s chapbook The Gambler’s Daughter was published

by The Orchard Street Press in 2022. Her latest full-length books are
World Enough, and Time (Kelsay, 2017) and Traction (Ashland Poetry,
2011), winner of the Richard Snyder Prize. Her poems have appeared
in journals including Poetry East, American Journal of Poetry, Southern Poetry
Review, Talking River Review, Crosswinds, and The Stillwater Review, and in 20
anthologies. Find her online at: www.marymakofske.com

glassworks 58
 Contributors | Issue 26
Claire Hamner Matturro has been a journalist, lawyer, organic
blueberry farmer, and professor at Florida State University College
of Law and University of Oregon School of Law. Raised on tales
of errant, unhinged kith and kin and a few nefarious whoppers, she
counts storytelling as her cultural and genetic inheritance. She is the
author of eight novels, including a series published by HarperCollins,
but has returned lately to her first literary love of poetry. She’s a
long-standing associate editor at Southern Literary Review. She and her
husband and their rescued, cross-eyed black cat live in Florida. Find
her online at: https://www.facebook.com/authorclairematturro

Reese Menefee is a poet from Kentucky. She is an MFA candidate

at McNeese State University. Her work is forthcoming in The Sun
Magazine and The Threepenny Review.

Kathleen McGookey has published four books of prose poems and

three chapbooks, most recently Instructions for My Imposter (Press 53)
and Nineteen Letters (BatCat Press). She has also published We’ll See, a
book of translations of French poet Georges Godeau’s prose poems.
Her work has appeared in Copper Nickel, December, Field, Glassworks,
Miramar, Ploughshares, Quiddity, The Southern Review, and Sweet. She has
received grants from the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the
Sustainable Arts Foundation.

Sam Moe is the first-place winner of Invisible City’s Blurred Genres

contest in 2022, and the 2021 recipient of an Author Fellowship from
Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing. Her first chapbook,
Heart Weeds, is out from Alien Buddha Press and her second chapbook,
Grief Birds, is forthcoming from Bullshit Lit in April 2023. You can
find them on Twitter and Instagram as @SamAnneMoe

Judith H. Montgomery’s poems appear in the Bellingham Review,

Tahoma Literary Review, and Poet Lore, among other journals, and in
a number of anthologies. Her first collection, Passion, received the
Oregon Book Award for Poetry. Her fourth collection, Litany for
Wound and Bloom, a finalist for the Marsh Hawk Prize, appeared in
2018 from Uttered Chaos Press. Her prize-winning narrative medicine
chapbook, Mercy, appeared from Wolf Ridge Press in 2019.

glassworks 59
 Annette Sisson’s poems can be found in Valparaiso Poetry Review,
Birmingham Poetry Review, Rust and Moth, The Citron Review, The Lascaux
Review, Third Wednesday, Five South Weekly, and others. Her book Small
Fish in High Branches was published by Glass Lyre Press in 2022. She was
a Mark Strand Scholar for the 2021 Sewanee Writers’ Conference and
has been a winner or finalist of many poetry contests, including Frontier
Poetry’s New Voices Contest and The Fish Anthology annual contest. In
2022, three of her poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize
and Best of the Net. Visit her website at: http://annettesisson.com

Jacob Stratman’s first collection of poems, What I Have I Offer With Two
Hands, was released in 2019 through the Poiema Poetry Series (Cascade
Books). His most recent poems can be found (or are forthcoming) in
The Christian Century, Spoon River Poetry Review, Salt Hill, Moria, Ekstasis,
among others. He teaches in the English department at John Brown
University in Siloam Springs, Arkansas.

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Contributors Fiction
Faith McNaughton
Art Kathryn Reese
E. O. Connors
Catherine Edgerton Nonfiction
Gerburg Garmann Joanna Acevedo
Carella Keil Chelsea M. Carney
Ted McLoof

Poetry
Devon Brock
Amber Lee Carpenter
Rachael Inciarte
Karina Jha
Sean Madden
Mary Makofske
Claire Hamner Matturro
Reese Menefee
Kathleen McGookey
Sam Moe
Judith H. Montgomery
Annette Sisson
Jacob Stratman