flashglass 2024 by Glassworks Magazine

glassworks

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

flash glass2024

flash glass

Volume X 2024

MASTER OF ARTS IN WRITING ROWAN UNIVERSITY

All work in flashglass originally appeared as digital content at RowanGlassworks.org

The staff of Glassworks magazine would like to thank Rowan University’s Master of Arts in Writing Program, and Rowan University’s Writing Arts Department.

flashglass, a subset of Glassworks, accepts flash fiction, prose poems, & micro essays See submission guidelines: RowanGlassworks.org

Glassworks maintains First North American 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.

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

Katie Budris

MANAGING EDITOR

Cate Romano

COVER ART

“Topography in Tiny C and Microsweet” by Ivan Amato Glassworks Issue 27

COVER DESIGN & LAYOUT

Katie Budris

Glassworks is a publication of Rowan University’s Master of Arts in Writing Program

Correspondence can be sent to: Glassworks c/o Katie Budris Rowan University 260 Victoria Glassboro, NJ 08028

E-mail: GlassworksMagazine@rowan.edu

Ha Kiet Chau | Illegal Fireworks Destroy Oakland Home in Fire | 17

Olivia Demac | Swampland | 26

Amy Devine | The Hoax | 10

Deron Eckert | Imperfect | 5

Joanne Esser | A Very Tenuous Grasp of History | 11

Jonathan Fletcher | Negatives | 8

Reece Gritzmacher | Beyond 10,000 | 12

Nora Gupta | Suppose I Stopped Running | 20

Self-Portrait as God of Hope | 21

Kale Choo Hanson | Miss October 1976 | 24

Oz Hardwick | A New Home Beneath the Stars | 11

Celeste Hurst | Cold | 4

Andrea Lius | Bistik Ayam | 29

Zach Keali’i Murphy | Mariana’s Headstone | 14

Garnet Juniper Nelson | Dispatches from a Red County | 6

Donna Obeid | Medina | 18

Brandy Reinke | Orb | 23

Jenny Severyn | Aviary | 16

Whitney Schmidt | The Things He Does That Have No Words | 28

Cold

Celeste Hurst

Heavy folds of Sherpa blanket sag down her arm, cold air rushing into the pocket of warmth. Watching the ripples of her breath gently crash through ginger and lemon tea, she hopes the draping makes her look like Meg Ryan in Sleepless in Seattle. Maybe Sandra Bullock in Practical Magic. It doesn’t. No kind wind pushing hair back. No full moon to gaze at. Snow hits the window, at least. But no drifting flakes. Just a frenzied swarm of tiny shards. The caretaker commented on the luck yesterday. That burying someone during the warm before the storm was easier than cutting deep into frozen ground. Maybe he didn’t think the young woman running her pale hand against glossy dark casket again—wishing the surface wasn’t so smooth, wanting a splinter or rough patch but feeling nothing but slippery varnish—could hear him. Fair enough. Most would be preoccupied after screaming, yelling sharp words that cut jagged lines in the throat. Words not spoken ten years ago, but left to molder, infecting the mouth. The heart. Finally spewed out over the corpse of a mother. Hoping the venom might pierce the armor of the pressed suit of a father. Hands and fingers aching for something to break against, yearning to feel something other than polished walnut. Settling for mangling a business card offered with soft words, words that would probably work on another woman, other children that weren’t left with rot in their bodies. But the slick card felt too smooth against trembling hands, too much like the coffin. She pulls the torn fragments from her pocket now, the blanket gaping further, her chest more vulnerable to cold. Tea and honey having soothed, the empty cup is set down slowly enough to not sound against a desk. The puzzle of a torn phone number is carefully solved with fingertips skimming the surname she abandoned. She remembers a gift given over a decade ago. Carefully chosen green and blue stripes, the favorite colors of father and daughter matching against each other. The same pattern seen on an old faded tie yesterday. A tie too old and cheap to match well with a fancy suit. But worn anyway. One hand gathers lumpy blanket closed around a shivering chest. The other hand carefully consults a torn number and raises a phone. Two rings, and then an answer.

flash glass 4

ImperfeCT

Deron Eckert

I once had someone who thought otherwise about me, but she has been dead for going on three years after cancer wouldn’t leave well enough alone. I try to do my best to see what she saw in me, but too many hits to the face have left the bridge of my nose so bent out of shape it’s hard to see myself in the mirror and think, You, sir, with your surgically corrected deviated septum, are flawless, even though I believe a misshapen nose looks better on a man, makes him, or I, look more handsome. At least that’s what I tell myself. Who knows whether it’s true or if I’m just lying the way I do when my hand shakes in front of someone who wants to know if I’m okay, if anything’s wrong, if I have something I want to say to them, and I’m too afraid to say it, afraid of what it may do to tell them the whole truth. So, I say I’m cold, which is true, but not the whole truth: that my hands shake all the time when they’re holding objects, have since I was a kid. It’s called an essential tremor, but shaky hands aren’t an attractive trait in a man and neither the tremor nor the cold is the sole reason I’m shaking with the knowledge we might part without me being able to say what you still mean to me, what I really want: to hold on to you if you can look at me again and see something other than the flaws, which is probably too much to ask of you now since I can’t even look at myself without mouthing what I should’ve been brave enough to say then with something other than these foolish shaking hands, I’m shaking because I want you.

dIspaTChes from a red CounTy

Garnet Juniper Nelson

dear dorothy,

another temp record shattered today every afternoon almost unbearable here in late summer & not just from heat the ants & spiders & blackberry canes all creeping increasingly into our sanctuary indiscriminate in their efforts to multiply exponentially & we may call them invasive so eager always to claim ourselves the caretakers of this land a land for you & me it’s said despite our complicity in its partition & destruction indeed our own inheritance is invasion & we have never settled for less & how dorothy do i convince my neighbor of this?

dorothy,

a new flag flies across the street. our community is full of them, each a sort of exclamation mark after the silence inflicted on us in the grocery store the clerk either stares wordlessly or scowls while they ring up our toilet paper & canned caffeinated sugar-free water & the vegetables & eggs & what offends them escapes me there is one flag which doesn’t fill my throat with dread across the street from the daycare but its solace is tempered by angry signs & slogans adorning many of the local homes & of course the pickup trucks with headlights that strip corneas bare or that sport steel testicles at the back end or pejorative decals about vegetarians & the sign nearest our home in the window of a man who flies the flag of the marine corps says make the liberals cry again & i wonder who it is they imagine crying because when my people cry it is often because one or more of us has in some fashion directly or indirectly been eliminated & what do the people praying for our blood lose in their defeat except pride & access to unfettered violence anyway we cannot fly a flag in answer or it might put our child in danger like every time we drop his other trans friend back home in her neighbor’s window the flag of the confederacy permanently displayed makes my blood rise my hand ache for a brick.

flash glass 6

dottie,

thinking about dying again feeling ridiculous you ought to see the puppy so tenaciously mischievous i can only wish i could ever be so uninhibited & yes this brings us to two dogs & three cats which brings us to two adult queers a queer child two dogs & three cats & i’m thinking about dying again i have a family & i’m thinking about dying again yesterday i felt jealous of roadkill on the way back from the ocean until upon passing i realized it was a backpack when you write will you tell me can a person who remains broken in the presence of purest love still be saved?

dot,

can’t decide if we’ll sell this house of other people’s memories the indecision reminiscent of the back and forth of this country on whether personhood should apply to everyone & we’re likely screwed we can hardly afford to rent even in this town & it seems we’re unwelcome—too many manicured lawns presiding over stately homes with darkened windows who knows what goes on behind some of those what propaganda is digested nightly full of pundits passing judgment on people who dare defend free expression or even worse advocate for its expansion—might be a while before i write again my dear friend as it is nearly time for another election.

negaTIves

Jonathan Fletcher

The day I learned you once lived in the jungle, I was in your knee-wall attic, looking for envelopes of negatives your wife had asked me to find.

“It should say BABY’S FIRST CHRISTMAS,” she hollered from the den, as if such a request would prove easy, should prove easy. As I sorted through towers of cardboard storage boxes, most neither dated nor labeled, I wondered when the last time was that she was up here. Or you.

“I don’t see a box with that year, Aunt Audrey.”

Though I didn’t hear her respond, I kept opening boxes, rifling through contents for negatives. I found Christmas tree lights. Christmas ornaments. A tree-topper. An envelope. Full of photos. No negatives. Then you. A picture of you. A much younger you. Sand in your hair. Sunscreen on your face. A tricolored beach ball in hand. Your wife next to you. My mother on the other side. A rippling, clear-blue ocean as background. What fun you must’ve had without me. Before me. I felt something stuck to the back of the photo. I turned the picture over, revealing another. You again. An even younger you, though. In olive green. A necklaced ball chain on what must’ve held your dog tags visible. U.S. ARMY above your left patch pocket. Other young men beside you. Also uniformed. Also smile-less. Jungle as background. As green as your camos. Patterned like them, too.

As I studied the photo, something else in the box caught my eye: on what looked like a small, framed diploma, George Washington’s profile gleamed—gold in color, enclosed in a heart-shaped medal; ribboned with purple; above printed text: TO PRIVATE FIRST CLASS MACKENZIE H. AMBROSE, UNITED STATES ARMY FOR WOUNDS RECEIVED IN ACTION.

Below the citation, wrapped in yellowed newspaper, was your Purple Heart, mounted in a presentation case. As I gently pulled back the crumpled newsprint, fingered grainy images of B-52s, anti-aircraft guns, and aerial maps, I read the front-page headline: CHRISTMAS BOMBING: NIXON ORDERS OPERATION LINEBACKER.

flash glass 8

Now I could see the whole picture. Now things started to make sense: your laconic responses, your gruff demeanor, your hearing loss, your refusal to dine at Vietnamese-American restaurants. With your Purple Heart in my hands, I grew somewhat resentful at your wife and my mother. Why hadn’t they told me? Didn’t they trust me? Yes, I was still a freshman, as much the activist against Bush’s War as those against Johnson’s and Nixon’s. But I wouldn’t have said anything. I wouldn’t have asked you about what you saw, heard, or smelled. I knew better. So enwrapped in my own thoughts was I that I did not hear your wife calling me from below.

Only when I felt the vibrations of your heavy footsteps on the stairs did I scramble, quickly but carefully putting back your pictures, citation, and medal, closing the lid to the box and shoving it behind the others. As you opened the door to the attic, I tried not to glance at your secrets, now boxed together again, letting on that I was snooping.

“Have you found the negatives yet?” you asked, standing inside the doorway.

I frowned and shook my head. Not the ones that you mean, uncle.

The hoax

Amy Devine

I am 12 years old and I have a whistle for a front tooth. I am 12 years old and I learn about two girls who tricked the world into thinking fairies were real and I wonder how they kept their dresses so white. Young girls are strange things and young women are even stranger. I am 12 years old and I am a young woman. Two girls put pictures of fairies on hatpins and someone calls them a miracle. Two young women claim to commune with paper cut outs and someone calls them a “mental disturbance.” I am 12 years old and I am a mental disturbance. I am 12 years old and I begin to hope that the growing pains are just like coming home in a white dress with wet feet, that I am on the cusp of evolutionary perfection and my theosophical burgeoning is nothing but a lazy skipping of stones until something better happens to me. Two girls make a product of their potential, print it on glass plates and hold their tongues. I am 12 years old and there are grooves in my tongue for fingernails. I am 12 years old and I am learning to affix the smallest wings to my biggest lies. I am 12 years old and I am just doing what my foresisters did before me. I am 12 years old and two girls teach me how to replicate the prettiest parts of myself for maximum consumption.

a new home beneaTh The sTars

Oz Hardwick

We fled under orders, tracking north along roads so new that the maps didn’t show them, sometimes so new that we had to lay them ourselves. Hardcore and tarmac. Burning palms blistering towards the Pole Star. We travelled by night and we travelled by day. We travelled by osmosis, by sleight of hand, and by a process akin to nuclear fission. We told no one our names, because names are power and we needed them to light our way, but we told ourselves lies to keep up morale and confuse the devil we knew was at our heels. At borders we became birds and rumours, and at rivers we became fish and superstitions. We fled under oath and never let ourselves down. Shadows sobbed as they took our hands. We fled under anaesthetic, and we still feel nothing but the dullest ache.

beyond 10,000

Reece Gritzmacher

You can’t stop dancing the night you learn your breast requires incision. Call your body a fountain of movement. You moonwalk sloppily from kitchen counter to trashcan. You spin in stockings. It’s not that you want surgery. Unlike many friends, you want to keep your breasts, whatever your pronouns. Unlike other friends, you don’t want reduction. Not to what some could call honey and bumble B’s. Okay, no some. Okay, no one. Okay, nauseous. No need to call a boob honey, Honey, but here’s where the right one bumbled: it grew a lump. That lump is keeping on.

You remind yourself not to run but look at you bounce up stairs. For dishes? Your journal? A tissue? Any excuse to step between here and there. There, there, the radiologist didn’t need to say, but she did say you’ll need a surgeon. And, even though you are just 29—short of 30, boob adulthood—a mammogram. You keep moving because you’ve been under strict orders to not increase your heart rate or engage in strenuous activity and you hit your limit. On your evening walk tonight, you were faster than yesterday. But you weren’t breathing hard, you told the air. It’s not as though you want your biopsy site to ruby. It’s not as though you seek infection.

The good news is the lump isn’t cancerous, your radiologist began. With an opener like that, you knew there’s an And. But. Even so.

Noncancerous but the lump could behave so—spread to other tissue, blossom and bloom your breast into an unbreastlike flower. But let’s stay away from any birds and bees metaphors. There will be no pollen here.

Six months ago, you absentmindedly checked your breast while in the thick of busywork and your fingers met rubber within an instant. Call to campus health clinic two minutes before close. Emergency ultrasound. 6-month follow-up this week. Sudden ultrasound-guided core needle biopsy.

You walked slowly for two days, post-biopsy, slower than pre-Industrial Revolution glacial melt. Lingered in Ace bandage. Iced with frozen spinach. When the greens thawed, you placed them back in the freezer. FDA-approved assistance? FDA still hasn’t approved the best chance of ending this pandemic.

You could only hibernate for a day and a half, and only on these terms: still get your 10,000 steps, however sluggish.

flash glass 12

13,500 yesterday, oops. There’s a world you must see. No turtle in sight, and herons might be gone for the summer, but look: ducks, squirrels, coots, bluebirds, and one luminous goldfinch.

How to say you’ve considered your mortality since age 12? You made peace with the possibilities before ever placed beneath hands or a scope?

So: you will dance. You will steal movement. Become a thief of motion. In a month or two, you’ll be put under. Cut with scalpel. But now? Thrill at this body, this body—all yours.

marIana’s headsTone

Zach Keali’i Murphy

The trees are bare enough to see the squirrels’ nests. Frederick scratches his gray mustache and squints his weathered eyes, wondering how a creature could rest on such a fragile bed, at such great heights, amidst winds that could carry away a thin branch.

During the spring and summer months, Frederick had spent every morning taking care of his beloved Mariana’s gravesite. He’d bring a pair of scissors in his back pocket, get down on his hands and knees, and make sure there wasn’t a single blade of grass out of place. A fresh set of daisies, strategically placed in a vase next to the headstone, would add a hint of delicate sun to the roughness of the stormcloud-colored granite.

With winter on the way, Frederick knows it’s going to be a lot harder to keep Mariana’s headstone clear. The snow doesn’t care about the names it covers, and wool gloves just aren’t enough to warm hands that have been cracked for forty years. The daisies will shrivel up quicker, if they don’t disappear first.

Frederick stands in front of Mariana’s headstone. He envisions himself lying peacefully in the plot next to her. When Frederick and Mariana got married, they’d always hoped that they wouldn’t ever be without each other for long. But when each minute feels like an empty lifetime, a day feels like another death.

On the way home, Frederick’s walking stick taps against the sidewalk like a ticking clock. His walking stick has seen better days, but so has anything that has traversed the grounds of time. His back seems to hunch more with each step, his frown burrows deeper, and every breath becomes a bigger job when the cold air enters his lungs. The new neighbors whisper to each other from their porch, and Frederick turns away. It’s hard to face the world when you’re mourning your own.

As Frederick approaches the walkway of his deteriorating Victorian house, he looks up and witnesses a squirrel falling from the birch tree in his front yard. The squirrel lands on the firm soil, pauses for a moment, frozen, then springs up and darts across the street as if nothing happened.

Frederick steps into his home which doesn’t feel like home anymore. He hangs up his scarf, caresses the sleeve of Mariana’s old coat, and sighs. After making his way up the creaking staircase to his bedroom, Frederick lies down in his bed and stares at the ceiling. A gust of wind rattles the shaky windows. The height of his loneliness makes him feel dizzy. He contemplates whether he’ll ever be able to get back up again or not. He closes his eyes and wishes he could be like the squirrels.

avIary

Jenny Severyn

Behind the glass, corn cob bedding pillows the dead finch. Hilly plops into the faux velvet wingback chair, notices the dusty purple dawn filtering through the gauzy drapes. She must be the one who found the little birdy first, like she’d found Edgar unresponsive in the backyard, his joggers and flannel button-up sopping from the streaming garden hose he still clutched. Hilly remembers thinking Edgar’s face was milky and mottled. She can’t imagine that curdled face now. But she can picture Grampa’s waxy, gaunt cheeks and the brown ribbing on the lumpy easy chair where he still reclined, muscles stiffened into place, and the odd tilt to her voice when she phoned her mother with the news.

Maryam enters the aviary, carting her supplies to feed the finches, clear their filth from the plastic vines, the ropes and perches, twine spherical roosts. Maryam had taught Hilly the little dead one is a zebra finch. Stripes and polka dots both, browns and greys. Maryam coos at the exotic little lifeless thing in soft public mourning. She advises Hilly to return to her room while Maryam cleans today. Hilly doesn’t. Maryam leaves to fetch an aide, returns alone, and says she’ll take you, Mrs. Moreland, just for today.

Stout Maryam hoists Hilly to her walker and caresses Hilly’s hunched shoulder while they plod down the beige hallway, a beaten flat and dingy streak down the carpet’s middle. Don’t be sad about the finch, Mrs. Moreland. He lived a good life. There, sit in the big chair, Mrs. Moreland. Are you okay? Do you need water? Okay. Have a good day, Mrs. Moreland. Hilly looks out her window. Past the tidily manicured boxwoods, sparrows peck at the asphalt parking lot. Hilly watches.

Illegal fIreworks desTory oakland home In fIre

Ha Kiet Chau

East Bay Times—July 5, 2021

Hot flashes of hell. Orange, bloodred flickers. Ba on a stretcher, ruminating, how this could have happened, his splendid nhà, his American dream, lit, poof, gone. Ma on the curb, in silent retreat, reliving old traumas, fears. The three of us on the sidewalk, homeless, shoeless as flames swell through the stairs, the rooms, the roof, torching the ceiling of the sky.

The firemen and police, the neighbors and culprits, the sirens and wailing. Horror burns like incense, hurts skin, flesh, bone. I pray for water, rain, relief. In times of crisis, shadows and figures appear, halos and orbs gliding towards us, calming chaos. Among the dozen faces and bodies, I recognize my grandfather kneeling in front of Ba, healing him from anguish, soul shock.

At dawn, the sun is confirmed dead. Loss is heavy, eerie, foreign. Shoveling mounds of debris, oak, and rubble, I locate pieces of ruined porcelain—the head of Buddha, decapitated. I am learning how to mourn without tears the way my parents did after losing their home, their belongings in the Vietnam War, escaping by boat on hazardous seas, displaced and separated in refugee camps, immigrating to America with nothing but hope.

medIna

Donna Obeid

You asked me to come, and I did, even though I knew it was wrong.

In that city of beaten red clay and ramparts, you took my hand and led me through medieval keyhole arches and thin, ribbonlike passages meant to confuse the enemy and disperse the jinn. Some doors led to cool, leafy fountain courtyards. Other doors led to riads rotting from neglect. We were in the medina on the other side of the world, far away from anyone and anything familiar; we could do whatever we wished. We skipped through the souks admiring the beauty of the ordinary—this ancient stone, these odours of cinnamon, clove and rose. Brass lanterns and swords. Bins of talismans. We spied on men in long saffron robes smoking hookahs in their cafes. Young teenage boys cried out—Hey! Who are you? Where you go? I take you.—and we walked past them laughing, as if you already knew the way. You had finished your lectures, and the days unfurled before us now like a fresh piece of paper.

Do you know where you’re going?—I asked, hearing the oddest thrill of excitement in my voice, looking vaguely round and letting myself be drawn further in.

A bright-eyed boy sold the sweetest orange juice in the square and a suited man named Azeem had shone shoes beneath the clock tower for all his life. The barber, the cobbler, the tooth puller—each shop was nothing more than a wobbly chair. Children behind every shop counter cheated you of change but you didn’t care. You chuckled at the mule with a carburetor tied to its back and the crooked man who called out Balak! Balak! as they passed. From the tiny bakery, you chose a slice of the thousand-layer cake and ate it in three bites.

In the mosque, you pointed out the calligraphy that was engraved on the ceiling and walls, the calligraphy that was almost everywhere in the city, you said. For these people had always believed that writing was sacred. Writing was their word of God. Outside, the smiling guard who’d been watching us mistook us for married, asking if this was the honeymoon. But no, I wanted to say, covering my hair again. There’s a wife who knows nothing of this. We are in the realm of the Forbidden.

A man stepped out of a doorway and invited us into his carpet shop, away from the heat, and rug after rug was spread out before our feet as three cups of mint tea were poured. When we emerged, it was from a door on a different side and the scene had changed completely. A girl sat weaving in a dark room beneath a single bulb.

A blind boy stood singing.

flash glass 18

I woke from the dream (of what?), the call to prayer echoing through the sky. Come back, you said, pulling me in again and slipping a hand between my legs. ~

Every night at dusk, the main square filled with musicians and storytellers. An old man, remarkably tall and thin, held up various props – a giant ostrich egg and feather plume and sword—as he told tales of choices and danger and fate. A wide-eyed woman with a ruby on her forehead felt it her duty to translate to me. You have the eyes to see you are caught in one story, and the heart to know you could change it to another.

We ate sheep brains at the stall of a boy who pointed the way to his brother’s rooftop bar, promising it had the best view of anywhere. Dozens of people just like us were there. You gave me a tiny pill and my heart quickened in beat with the drums. It was our last night and I spun round and round, the sounds echoing loudly within me because perhaps it was true that I was hollow at the core. In the morning, I’d leave, and you’d switch cities, and your wife and children would join you.

I glanced up and saw you watching me from the other side without any expression at all. I am alone, I thought, leaning into the sparkly air. Sometime later, I went back down to search for the toilet. There, through the tiniest window, I looked into the yellow room across the alley where someone, sitting before a mirror, was drawing a picture of herself.

suppose I sTopped runnIng

Nora Gupta

for Kate

Suppose I stopped running from the walls of your overly decorated bedroom. Suppose I let your laughter twirl my hair, suppose I let my stomach knot, you lay bedridden blocks away, your heart readying to stop.

Suppose I stopped running and let the soles of my feet bleed into the road’s endless tar, bordered by the blanket of grass fields. Suppose the silence of summer became too sweet to swallow, the puffs of breath clouding the air like caramel cigar smoke.

Suppose I stopped running and filled your maple-soft hand with mine. Suppose your pulse slowed as mine quickened. Suppose your eyelids, touched by gravity, finally closed.

Suppose I stopped running and October never ended and the orange and brown leaves clung to their branches and my tears clung to my eyes.

Suppose I sat in the frosted grass and whispered in your ear and stared into your sea-black eyes. Suppose pain blessed my heart and my unfulfilled promises don’t hurt anymore.

Suppose my words will float off this wrinkled paper and my rhymes will be silk. Suppose you hear me.

But you don’t.

So I keep running.

flash glass 20

self-porTraIT as god of hope

Nora Gupta

With every heaving breath Elpis took, I saw / god’s bet twinkling in her eyes. Her skin was / transparent— I could see each quiver of her pulse, each hiss / of her garden-snake veins—and I don’t know / if this is the perennial of God’s will but Mama told me / god’s angels have swallowed Elpis, leaving her / frostbitten. I still don’t know / what god Mama spoke of, but Papa says / Elpis is dying, he said her flesh would tighten around her bones /as her eyes sank and her legs crumbled. And I cried / I cried until my eyes rang bloodshot, the innocent glimmer / of Elpis between my matted lashes. Elpis, matted / with tears and a scream prying open my lips. / And slithering out my lips was the gutting sound of a mother losing / her firstborn daughter, of my pupils shrinking / back into my sockets and Elpis’s hands wrinkling my breath / and now when I put my palm in hers, my fingers interlace hers and I see / the prairies she never visited, the daisies and dandelions she braided / around her forearms, each petal falling with a beat of her heart. And underneath her glazed eyes, pink roses / swirling with the black rot as summer parasites blossom, blossom with the pain of a fresh bruise each time / I press it.

a very Tenuous grasp of hIsTory

Joanne Esser

I am at the point where it is hard to remember precisely when things happened. Or in what order. I am not good with dates, never have been, will over- or hugely under-estimate how long it has been since ______ . Even when the events were of great significance: A birth. A death. The day I met the person who is literally the most important individual in my life. They blend together, months and years, jumble around. Most often I recall a scent, or the weather that day, if there was snow on the ground yet or if we were wearing shorts.

In real life things do not march in orderly lines toward their conclusions. Some effects have no causes, some causes no direct consequences. You let go of blame over time. This happened, and this, but one did not bring the other into being. Like husbands, arguments, kisses. Like departures that in retrospect seem just natural next steps in the walk of life. I carved a pumpkin out of habit, will hang up the stockings when the calendar says it is time. Were my parents still alive when my niece was born, the young woman who is now planning her wedding? I did not know about my ex-husband’s heart attack until months later. He could have died. But he didn’t. And I met him in the produce aisle one day by chance, heard the whole story. And then have not seen him once since. What are the odds for anything? Everything seems to happen at once, and I still wake up the next morning unprepared. I put a clock in every room, yet am surprised that the hands keep turning.

Brandy Reinke

The size of the moon startles me as I step onto my porch. It is large and high in the sky. I forgot today is the full moon. Good luck. New intentions. My shadow is extra-long across the sidewalk in front of me when I start my walk. I talk to myself like I do, in the quiet of the morning. Is that Jupiter glowing to the right side of the moon? Is there a right side of the moon? Or is it just my right side? Does the moon have sides? I give the tiny glowing light to the right of the moon a wave and whisper: hi Jupiter, even knowing, despite knowing, it could very well not be Jupiter; I could be waving at a satellite.

They say not to look at your phone right when you wake up, but I do anyway, each day before my walk. Your tumor is back. It took your mom three full paragraphs before she said the words again. I want to re-read the message. Scour it. I take a deep breath, blow it into my hands, warm them up, then shake them out a couple times and keep walking. The phone shifts in my pocket, tapping against my hip with each step. I can feel it there, pressing against me, light and heavy at the same time.

The shadows of the trees are short and sideways in the extra moonlight. Distorted, they look wrong, but I can see the proper shape of the leaves at the edge of the shadows if I squint just right. Trying to find their shape in the dark feels like a game, like comfort. I count how many leaves I can find as I go past each tree. Five, then three, then four, then seven. I stop counting at seven. Lucky number seven.

The coyotes ruffle around to my left. Or maybe it’s some javelinas. I’m not worried. We leave each other alone. I like to think it’s because they know me by now. They are readying for breakfast or sleep. I never know which. I like to wonder about that, about their lives. I give them a little wave, too.

Past the coyotes or javelinas, at the end of the long curving corner of the gravel path, I have a perfect view of the full moon. I think: orb, and smile a wobbly, little smile. I love that word, I whisper. I wonder about the message in my pocket. I take some time to launch some prayers, shoot them toward the moon. I make sure as many prayers go up as tears do, down my face. The squeak from the soles of my shoes is loud when I hit pavement again. I try my best to follow my extra-long moonlight shadow down the street. I am unable to catch it no matter how fast I walk, no matter how hard I try.

oCTober 1976

Kale Choo Hanson

It started, as it always does, with a small movement. We sat at the dining room table, our heads bowed for grace, when I noticed it. Just beside my chair the tattered fringe of my mother’s hand woven Persian carpet lifted ever so slightly and curled over on itself. I slid my foot closer to my body as we said Amen.

Then she began to escalate. There were the blonde hairs that fell across my shoulders and lap while I read, the sound of sheer fabric sweeping the floor as I scurried across the hardwood to get a glass of water at night, the single wool socks that never make it back from laundry. I hid my mother’s lipsticks because I knew she was using them. I could smell her perfume lingering on everything, the eyeshadows, the cakey translucent powder. I prayed my mother wouldn’t notice.

At school, Marcie from Spanish warned me about Artie’s, the old firehouse-turned-antique store in town. Things come home with you when you go there. And I’m not talking about the items you buy, she said. Other things. But when I decided to skip 6th period and wander through the unsteady stacks of yellowing books and walnut desks, I found her on a shelf between A Curious Farmer’s Field Guide and Best Baseball Stats: 2001--the centerfold page falling open to reveal her photo, the white lace, the barn setting, her eyes at half mast, her sheer skirt dipping across her lap, Miss October 1976. She wasn’t on a sketchy website, or hidden behind a group of snickering high school faces; she was published in gloss across three pages, elegant, proud. And I couldn’t leave without her.

But the haunting was getting worse. Small fires began to start in the basement, my father’s church shirts turned up shredded, boiling cups of tea tipped and fell into our laps. My mother had to stick a wooden spoon in the kitchen window frames so they wouldn’t slam shut while she cooked. On a night when Father Bard came for dinner he left the table to use the bathroom and after ten minutes tore down the hall and out the front door, his coat still swaying on the coat rack.

That night, I knelt beside my bed and slid her from her hiding place between the pages of a biology textbook. Please stop, I begged, I’ll do anything. I don’t want anyone knowing you’re here. Just then, a draft moved through my bedroom, fluttering the captivating look in her eyes, and I understood. It all made sense. I knew why she was so agitated.

flash glass 24

The next morning I rummaged through the box way in the back of the closet and found one of my mother’s wool hats, my father’s scarf, a thick pair of socks that were lined with fuzz. I folded them neatly and tucked them under the bed, next to the stack of textbooks.

There was silence for a while, and I laid awake each night, worried that she had left me.

But I was wrong. The hauntings returned, but now, they were sweet. The trashcan nudged closer to the counter to catch a falling potato peel, our clothes already warm when we dressed in the winter, a soft hand on the shoulder when things got tough. I was relieved. Now, Miss October 1976 is there for me when I need her, perpetually smiling through deep red lipstick, her clothes slouching away from her body, her hair poofed with hot rollers, her thumb grazing her cheekbone. I admire her most nights. Take her out and gaze over her. I imagine her voice, her laugh. I’ll keep her forever. I’ll learn to be seductive in her specific way. She is everything. She was just cold.

swampland

Olivia Demac

The swamp was the best place to watch wading birds, and wading birds were the only birds I watched. Sully didn’t like the swamp, but he drove us there anyway. He was going to propose. Otherwise, he wouldn’t waste the trip to some place only I liked. Sully was quieter than normal, but I chalked it up to nerves. Proposing was a big deal. He didn’t have to worry. Even though he hated swamps I’d say yes. Marriage was about compromise. We followed faded signs to a boardwalk connecting two mudflats. I looked for the soft glow of alligator eyes between gaps in the planks. Sully walked with his hands in his pocket, protecting the ring from falling into the water. Cattails and spider lilies crept up and twisted around the splintering wood. Glass glass beer bottles glistened in the shallow water. I wanted to fish them out, but Sully stopped me.

“Marci,” Sully said. “If you fall in the water, you’re on your own.” The water would give me a bacterial infection if it touched my skin, he said.

“If you fall in the water, I’ll jump in after you,” I said. Sully needed me. He didn’t know how to swim.

Sully didn’t say anything because he saw a dead bird. It was a great egret. Its body was washed up on the mudflat but its head floated on the water. Turtles surfaced and the bird’s neck swayed in the ripples. Maggots were feasting on its flesh underneath a thinning layer of feathers. Sunlight caught on the water and the remains of the bird morphed into a passing cloud, and I couldn’t tell them apart.

“Are you okay?” Sully asked.

“I’m okay.” The bile in my stomach burned the back of my throat. The air was stale and sweat dripped down my forehead.

Sully knelt and untied his shoe. He could have picked a better spot. I didn’t want to think of a rotting carcass every time I held the diamond to the sky, but it was nice of him to try and cheer me up. Sully wouldn’t look me in the eye.

“I met someone else,” he said. There were other great egrets off in the distance, but cicadas drowned out their low crocks.

“I did too,” I said. It was a lie. I only wanted him. The wind blew and the stench from the decomposing carcass drifted up and wrapped itself around Sully. I took small breaths through my mouth, but I tasted the rotten flesh on my tongue. I gagged.

Sully walked to the end of the boardwalk and crushed tall blades of cordgrass underneath his feet. If he stayed in the same place too long, the soles of his shoes would leave an imprint. I stood next to him, and sank into the ground, the algae-laden water pooling around the outsoles of my shoes. I shoved Sully and he broke the surface of the water, distorting the reflections of cypress and tupelo trees.

The ThIngs he does ThaT have no words

Whitney Schmidt

Before

He steals your breath sometimes. The story you tell is a fine line passed from his lips and tongue as he holds you down. You memorize him quickly; this will be on the test. You are girlfriend: the only one who understands him. Once, he punches the door when you shut it so you can pee and cry. Rainbow flowers bloom on your neck your arms your breasts your inner thighs, but he kisses the flowers away with gentle tears. You know the pressure of his forehead on your belly, his arms tight around your waist as he kneels and apologizes and tells you things. His devotion is an incandescent bulb always on and radiant with heat. You no longer feel your hands, so you wouldn’t know if this is love or arson.

During

You are a basement with a long blue couch and no windows. You are heartbeat, a thunderous drum. You are shallow breath and stiff muscles. A blue couch cushion pressed down and down. His hands and his knees. You are wait. You are stop. You are your words lost in his mouth—breathed in, chewed up, swallowed down. You are his fingers. You are wait. You are stop. You are the sound of him. You are red light behind your eyes. You are it. You are tag you’re it. You are full of worms and dirt and him. You are nothing. You are a percussion instrument. Dark light bulbs. A ceiling fan with still blades. You are white noise. You are his toothy smile. You are the wallpaper train circling the crown molding. A boxcar with open doors and no cargo.

After

Days later you take your first shower, if standing still under hot water counts as trying. You tilt your head so the stream runs into your ears and you hear only breath and heartbeat. You do not wash yourself: he stole your hands: now every touch is his. You set the tap as hot as you can stand and once the heat stops hurting you turn it up again and again and when you can’t make it any hotter, you make it icy cold. Repeat until you feel nothing not even the pulse of him or the water beating your skin. You wish you could do something about the him on the inside.

flash glass 28

bIsTIk ayam

Andrea Lius

My mom cooks bistik ayam with chicken wings because I like chicken skin and wings really maximize skin to flesh ratio, and with extra broth because I eat my bistik ayam like soup instead of with rice like normal people.

She learned the original recipe from her mom and her mom from hers and her mom’s mom from hers. But that’ll be the end of the line because I don’t plan on ever having children, but also mainly because I refuse to have my mom teach me.

When she asks me why, I often just shrug and tell her it’s okay. Or that I’m lazy. Or that I only like it when she makes it. Or that I only like it when we eat it together.

I never share that I’m scared that my bistik ayam won’t be as good as hers and that it’ll make me sad because I have to eat my bistik ayam instead of hers because she lives ten thousand miles away. And that I’m even more scared that my bistik ayam will be just as good as hers and that it’ll make me even sadder because it’ll be further proof that I no longer need her.

Or that to me, bistik ayam has come to embody the amount of time that we have left together. I eat bistik ayam twice a year, once when she visits in the summer and once when I visit in the winter, so the number of times that she has left to make me bistik ayam is equal to the number of times that I still get to hug her hello and tell her that it’s nice to see her. Which is also equal to the number of times that I still get to hug her goodbye and tell her that I’ll see her soon and actually do get to see her soon.

Or that after she’s gone, I never want to find out if bistik ayam will taste just as sweet and rich as it’s supposed to or salty like my tears or bitter like her ashes. Because then bistik ayam will just be chicken wings in sweet brown soup without the sight of her smiling proudly for having done something I like. And without the smell of sweet soy sauce and white pepper and butter and shallots and nutmeg permeating her skin and clothes. And without the sound of her laughing at how I’m eating my bistik ayam all wrong and wondering why I so stubbornly choose not to learn how to make bistik ayam.

ConTrIbuTors

Ha Kiet Chau is the author of two poetry collections Eleven Miles to June (Green Writers Press 2021) and Woman Come Undone (Mouthfeel Press 2014). Her writings have appeared in Ploughshares, Asia Literary Review, Empty House Press, New Madrid, and Columbia College Literary Review. Her YA novel in verse, Darling Winter, is forthcoming in 2024. Find Ha on Instagram: @sweetpoeticsoo

Olivia Demac was born in Worcester, Massachusetts. She is a graduate student at the University of New Orleans and is currently working towards earning her MFA in creative writing. She received a BA in English from Nicholls State University in 2021.

Amy Devine is an artist from a lineage of artists whose work has been featured in several publications including Orange Peel, Gems, and Beyond the Veil Press. She is based in Sydney, Australia and she is inspired by history and the narrative of humanity. Follow her on Instagram: @devineinspirational

Deron Eckert is a writer and poet who lives in Lexington, Kentucky. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Rattle, Strange Horizons, Door is a Jar, Ghost City Review, Maudlin House, The Fourth River, and elsewhere. He can be found on Instagram and X (Twitter): @DeronEckert

Joanne Esser is the author of the poetry collection Humming At The Dinner Table, the chapbook I Have Always Wanted Lightning, and the forthcoming All We Can Do Is Name Them (Fernwood Press, 2024). Recent work appears in Echolocation, I-70 Review, Wisconsin Review, and Plainsongs. She earned an MFA from Hamline University and has been a teacher of young children for over forty years.

Jonathan Fletcher, originally from San Antonio, Texas, holds an MFA in Creative Writing in Poetry from Columbia University School of the Arts. He has been published in: Acropolis Journal, The Adroit Journal, Arts Alive San Antonio, The BeZine, BigCityLit, Book of Matches Literary Journal, Catch the Next: Journal of Ideas and Pedagogy, Colossus Press, Curio Cabinet, Door is a Jar, DoubleSpeak, Emerge Literary Journal, Flora Fiction, FlowerSong Press, fws: a journal of literature & art, Half Hour to Kill, Heimat Review, Hyacinth Review, LONE STARS, Midway Journal, The MockingOwl Roost-An Art and Literary Magazine, and MONO.

Reece Gritzmacher lives in Northern Arizona in a mountain town surrounded by ponderosa pines, but grew up hugging trees in the Pacific Northwest. Their poetry and prose has appeared or is forthcoming on Barrelhouse, Sundog Lit, Bending Genres, Ghost City Review, and elsewhere. They are a Tin House Summer Workshop participant and hold an MFA from Northern Arizona University. You can find them at: www.reecegritzmacher.com

Nora Gupta is a student poet at the Bronx High School of Science. She is Editor-in-Chief for Double Yolk, a publication featuring poets of color and their creative processes. Nora has received recognition from several organizations, such as the National Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, the National YoungArts Foundation, Princeton University, National Council of Teachers of English, Gannon University, and Smith College. You will find Nora’s poetry in the upcoming issues of Notre Dame Review and Sho Poetry Journal.

Kale Choo Hanson is a writer from Philadelphia. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Peatsmoke Journal, Grande Dame Literary, and Lunar Lit Magazine. She holds an MFA from Temple University and is working on her first novel.

Oz Hardwick is a European poet and academic, who has been described as a “major proponent of the neosurreal prose poem in Britain.” His most recent full collection, A Census of Preconceptions (SurVision, 2022), was shortlisted for a number of international awards but didn’t win any, though he feels pretty confident about the upcoming egg-and-spoon race. His latest publications are the chapbook My Life as a Time Traveller: a Memoir in 18 Discrete Fragments (Hedgehog, 2023) and a track on the Deadworld album by British space rockers Incubus Lovechild. Oz is Professor of Creative Writing at Leeds Trinity University. www.ozhardwick.co.uk

Celeste Hurst graduated from the University of Utah with a BA in English and from Lindenwood University with an MFA in Creative Writing where she was also an editorial assistant for The Lindenwood Review. Her work has been published in The Citron Review. She lives in Utah and enjoys participating in community theater.

Andrea Lius grew up in Jakarta, Indonesia and now splits her time between Washington and California. Her words have appeared or are forthcoming in The New York Times, The Mersey Review, and Door Is A Jar. She’s currently trying to teach her mischievous grey tabby how to read. Connect with her on Twitter/X: @liuswrites

Zach Keali’i Murphy is a Hawaii-born writer with a background in cinema. His stories appear in The MacGuffin, Reed Magazine, The Coachella Review, Raritan Quarterly, Another Chicago Magazine, Little Patuxent Review, Flash Frog, and more. He has published the chapbook Tiny Universes (Selcouth Station Press). He lives with his wonderful wife, Kelly, in St. Paul, Minnesota. flash glass 31

Garnet Juniper Nelson is an androgyne birthed & corrupted in the American high desert who now writes from the Pacific Northwest. A graduate of the MFA program in creative writing at the University of Nevada, Reno, their work has appeared in publications such as Salamander, Waxwing, Poet Lore, Ninth Letter, Frontier Poetry, Salt Hill, and Pidgeonholes, and has received nominations for Best of the Net and Pushcart prizes. They currently teach writing at Centralia and Lower Columbia Colleges.

Donna Obeid is an award-winning writer and educator who has been nominated multiple times for the Pushcart Prize. She earned a BA in English and Comparative Literature from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and an MA and MFA from American University. She currently lives in Stanford, California. Read more of her writing at: www.donnaobeid.com and @donna0writes

Brandy Reinke is an author living in Phoenix, Arizona. She has published short-fiction pieces in: The Redrock Review, Esthetic Apostle, Tulane Review, Big Muddy Review, Microfiction Monday Magazine, Moonstone Arts, and the HCE Review. She was a finalist in Alternating Current Press’ 2024 Luminaire Poetry Award, awarded an Honorable Mention in short fiction in Glimmer Train’s final publication, as well as had a piece short-listed in the Fish Anthology. Her novel was short-listed as a finalist for Unleash Press’ Inaugural 2022 Book Prize.

Jenny Severyn lives in Ohio with her husband. She holds a BA in English from Loyola University Chicago and an MLIS from Simmons University. Her work has appeared in Litbreak, Eunoia Review, and Apricity Press.

Whitney Schmidt is a teacher, writer, and amateur lepidopterist with a passion for poetry, prose, and pollinators. She founded the first student-led secondary school Writing Center in Oklahoma. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Wild Roof Journal, Mantis, South Florida Poetry Journal, and The Banyan Review, among others. She lives near Tulsa with her husband, two pit-mix rescue pups, and various moth and butterfly guests.