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

Sisters by Ann Howells

4/1/2017

1 Comment

 
Picture
Comingled blood, dark as windfall cherries, spattered lichen-streaked stones: grandfather (dead of foolishness), still-born Baby Anne—your family plot. And you might have sprung, angle and bone, from that corner yew, dark, with dark lank hair while I was mere summer folk, city girl—pudgy, pale, whiskey-colored ringlets. But on that garland branch, we pricked thumbs, became sisters.
​
Envy grew green as island pines. Your narrow saltbox: high-ceilinged rooms, chamber pots beneath iron beds, stone-floor kitchen with hand pump and black, wood-burning stove—matriarchal dragon dominating the room, captured me. Your grandmother, brown and bony as yourself, knew things. I trotted behind as she gentled Sunday’s chicken. Ax arced, shell-carved eye stilled while deranged feathers convulsed in mad, mute tarantella. I was baptized in blood. You hungered only for trolley rides, glass revolving-doors, luncheons on the mezzanine, until you turned fifteen—one umbrella step ahead as always—left for New Orleans, a married woman.

Island wives lashed tongues, raised long, red welts on your memory: Got herself in trouble. Uh-huh. I alone knew it wasn’t love or even lust that lured you; it was city lights. Had I been offered spells and incantations, I’d have gone too.


Picture
Ann Howells’s poetry appears in Borderlands, Spillway, THEMA and in anthologies: Goodbye, Mexico and The Southern Poetry Anthology, Volume VIII: Texas (Texas Review Press), Pushing the Envelope and Texas Weather Anthology (Lamar University Press) and elsewhere. She has edited Illya’s Honey since 1999, recently going digital (www.IllyasHoney.com) and adding a co-editor. Publications include: Black Crow in Flight (Main Street Rag), Under a Lone Star (Village Books), Letters for My Daughter (Flutter), and Cattlemen & Cadillacs, as editor, (Dallas Poets Community). Ann served as President of Dallas Poets Community for four years and as Treasurer for many more.
​

1 Comment
Katinka link
5/17/2017 08:46:19 pm

I've read this story twice now, with about a month in between. Strong, provocative and terse language; sparsely woven yet evocative of much deeper entanglements. Very nicely done.

Reply



Leave a Reply.

    flash glass:
    a monthly publication of flash fiction, prose poetry, & micro essays


    Categories

    All
    Aimee Parkison
    American Ingenue In Russia
    Ann Howells
    Erinn Batykefer
    Extinct Carnivores
    Flash Fiction
    Girl In Finger Web
    History
    Hybrid Genre
    Julie Gard
    Kathleen McGookey
    Mark Trechock
    Micro Essay
    Noiseless
    Patient
    Persistence
    Prose Poetry
    Samuel J Fox
    She Steers Toward The Horizon
    Sisters
    The Girl In The Feather Skirt Sends A Postcard
    Victoria Dym
    Vocabulary Lesson
    Whereas
    William Doreski
    Woman Who Flies An Aeroplane


    Cover Image: "Yellow Red Wine Glasses, Paris"
    ​Roger Camp | Issue 7


    RSS Feed

Picture

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

All Content on this Site
(C) 2021 glassworks