Glassworks
  • home
  • about
    • history
    • masthead
    • staff bios
    • community outreach
    • affiliations
    • contact
  • current issue
    • read Issue 21
    • letter from the editor
    • looking glass fall 2020
    • interview with Porsha Olayiwola
    • new book reviews
    • new opinion editorials
  • submit
    • submission guidelines
  • looking glass
    • fall 2020
    • spring 2020
    • fall 2019
    • spring 2019
    • fall 2018
    • spring 2018
    • fall 2017
    • apprentice 2017
    • spring 2017
    • fall 2016
    • spring 2016
    • fall 2015
    • spring 2015
    • fall 2014
    • spring 2014
    • spring 2012
    • winter 2012
    • fall 2011
  • editorial content
    • book reviews
    • opinion
    • interviews >
      • Ed Briant
      • Eugene Cross
      • Josh Denslow
      • Christopher DeWan
      • Katherine Flannery Dering >
        • Aftermath
      • Eric Dyer
      • Julie Enszer >
        • Avowed
      • Mitchell Fink
      • Olivia Gatwood
      • David Gerrold
      • Cynthia Graham
      • Ernest Hilbert
      • Paul Lisicky >
        • The Roofers
      • Scott McCloud
      • Jan Millsapps
      • Anis Mojgani
      • Pedram Navab
      • Kelly Norris
      • Porsha Olayiwola
      • Michael Pagdon
      • Aimee Parkison >
        • The Petals of Your Eyes
      • Brad Parks
      • Chris Rakunas
      • Carlos Ramos
      • Mary Salvante
      • Jill Smolowe
      • Jayne Thompson
      • Julie Marie Wade
      • Melissa Wiley
  • flash glass
    • flash glass 2020
    • flash glass 2019
    • flash glass 2018
    • flash glass 2017
    • flash glass 2016
    • flash glass 2015
  • media
    • art
    • photography
    • audio
    • video
    • new media
  • archive
    • read past issues
    • order print issues
  • Master of Arts in Writing program
    • about Writing Arts at Rowan University
    • application and requirements
  • newsletter

Bridgetender
by Susanna Lang

You need a light hand, a capacity for sitting still.

You need to hear more than was intended,
catch the words unspoken by lovers who assume
your house too small to be inhabited. Listen closely
for the soft whistles of a duckling lost beneath the struts.

You need an eye for what will happen next,
a boat too tall for clearance or a man too near the edge.
You must wave back at the fisherman who waves each time he goes through,
especially the last time when he has only ten minutes
before his heart gives out and his boat goes drifting with the current.

You look on tenderly,
invisible keeper of the keys:
you can open a way or you can stop
all those who would cross over.

Alert to the changing light,
to the quiet voice of the water at the city’s heart,
most of the time you do nothing.
You wait.
Picture

Susanna Lang’s most recent collection of poems, Travel Notes from the River Styx, was released in June 2017 by Terrapin Books. Her last collection was Tracing the Lines (Brick Road Poetry Press, 2013). A two-time Hambidge fellow, she has published original poems and translations from the French in such journals as Little Star, New Letters, december, Blue Lyra Review, Prime Number Magazine, and Verse Daily.  She teaches in the Chicago Public Schools.

A 2017 Pushcart Prize nominee, Lang's poem can be found in Issue 15 of Glassworks.
Picture

260 Victoria Street • Glassboro, New Jersey 08028 
glassworksmagazine@rowan.edu

All Content on this Site
(C) 2021 glassworks
Photo used under Creative Commons from vwcampin