Glassworks
  • home
  • about
    • history
    • staff bios
    • community outreach
    • affiliations
    • contact
  • current issue
    • read Issue 26
    • letter from the editor
    • looking glass spring 2023
    • interview with Raina J. Leon
    • interview with Sarah Fawn Montgomery
  • submit
    • submission guidelines
  • looking glass
    • through the looking glass
  • editorial content
    • book reviews
    • opinion
    • interviews
  • flash glass
    • flash glass 2023
    • flash glass 2022
    • flash glass 2021
    • flash glass 2020
    • flash glass 2019
    • flash glass 2018
    • flash glass 2017
    • flash glass 2016
    • flash glass 2015
  • media
    • art
    • audio
    • video
  • archive
    • award nominees
    • read and order back issues
  • Master of Arts in Writing program
    • about Writing Arts at Rowan University
    • application and requirements
  • newsletter
  • home
  • about
    • history
    • staff bios
    • community outreach
    • affiliations
    • contact
  • current issue
    • read Issue 26
    • letter from the editor
    • looking glass spring 2023
    • interview with Raina J. Leon
    • interview with Sarah Fawn Montgomery
  • submit
    • submission guidelines
  • looking glass
    • through the looking glass
  • editorial content
    • book reviews
    • opinion
    • interviews
  • flash glass
    • flash glass 2023
    • flash glass 2022
    • flash glass 2021
    • flash glass 2020
    • flash glass 2019
    • flash glass 2018
    • flash glass 2017
    • flash glass 2016
    • flash glass 2015
  • media
    • art
    • audio
    • video
  • archive
    • award nominees
    • read and order back issues
  • Master of Arts in Writing program
    • about Writing Arts at Rowan University
    • application and requirements
  • newsletter
Glassworks

Tin Dust by Juliann Shepherd

7/1/2020

0 Comments

 
Picture
I am thinking about tin turning to dust in the snow.
 
I am thinking about that young French soldier, on Napoleon’s doomed march, with his chapped skin and shaking fingers. How, when going to do up his coat one morning, he found nothing there. How he would pull, and grasp, and nearly tear the fabric into a frenzied shred with his panic. How something he had never known was now known, now unknowable. How all that was standing between him and a frozen death were tiny circles of hammered metal. "Maybe God has singled me out," he thinks with his dread and resolve. But then another man rises, and another, and not a button to be found among them. And that young French soldier realizing that they are all going to die in this white terror of a country. He had a moment to be alone with his death before it came for him, and none of these other men had such a luxury and a torture. Did it make him better, later? Being alone when the universe had a hole blown through it? Or was he haunted by the waiting, waiting, waiting for another voice. “Where are they? Where have they gone? How could they possibly be gone?”
 
I'm thinking about this, standing alone outside a hospice in January. It's snowing very softly. My mother is dead. I'm waiting for my father to come outside.


Juliann Shepherd is in her last semester at Ohio University, pursuing a degree in English with a concentration in Creative-Writing. Her work can also be found in Polaris magazine and Words Dance website. Although she frequently can be found performing spoken word for her house plants, they have declined to comment on it's quality.
0 Comments

    FLASH GLASS: A MONTHLY PUBLICATION OF FLASH FICTION, PROSE POETRY, & MICRO ESSAYS

      


    Categories

    All
    AJ Ferguson
    Andrew Jason Jacono
    Angie Kang
    Arya Francesca-Jenkins
    Bernard: 9/8/58
    Bobolink
    Christina Stump
    Christina Trujillo
    Claire Scott
    Crying Anya
    Daddy's Gift
    Flash Fiction
    Heart
    In The Garden
    Jason B. Crawford
    Juliann Shepherd
    Lauro Palomba
    Les Bares
    Lithopedion
    Micro Essay
    Miracles
    Multi-Tasking
    Natalie Coufal
    Northern Parula
    Prose Poetry
    Scott Ragland
    Sisyphus Needs A Caddy
    There's A Draft
    They Weren't Kicked Out
    Tin Dust
    Tomorrow
    Tonight
    Tree Swallow


    COVER IMAGe:​"Ice Crystals" 
    Ana Prundaru
    ​ISSUE 10


    RSS Feed


Picture

glassworks is a publication of
​Rowan University's Master of Arts in Writing
260 Victoria Street • Glassboro, New Jersey 08028 
glassworksmagazine@rowan.edu
​All Content on this Site (c) 2023 glassworks