GLASSWORKS
  • home
  • about
    • history
    • staff bios
    • community outreach
    • affiliations
    • contact
  • Current Issue
    • read Issue 30
    • letter from the editor
    • looking glass spring 2025
    • interview with Dale M. Kushner
    • interview with Jessie vanEerden
  • submit
    • submission guidelines
  • looking glass
    • spring 2025
  • editorial content
    • book reviews
    • opinion
    • interviews >
      • Dale M. Kushner
      • Jessie vanEerden
  • flash glass
    • flash glass 2025
    • flash glass 2024
    • 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
    • best of the net nominees
    • pushcart prize 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 30
    • letter from the editor
    • looking glass spring 2025
    • interview with Dale M. Kushner
    • interview with Jessie vanEerden
  • submit
    • submission guidelines
  • looking glass
    • spring 2025
  • editorial content
    • book reviews
    • opinion
    • interviews >
      • Dale M. Kushner
      • Jessie vanEerden
  • flash glass
    • flash glass 2025
    • flash glass 2024
    • 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
    • best of the net nominees
    • pushcart prize nominees
    • read and order back issues
  • Master of Arts in Writing Program
    • about Writing Arts at Rowan University
    • application and requirements
  • Newsletter
GLASSWORKS
Picture

dispatches from a red county by Garnet Juniper Nelson

2/1/2024

0 Comments

 
Picture
Photo by Arno Smit on Unsplash
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. 
~
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. 

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.
0 Comments

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

    COVER IMAGE:
    ​"Topography in Tiny C and MicrosweeT" 
    Ivan Amato
    ​ISSUE 27


    Categories

    All
    Amy Devine
    Andrea Lius
    A New Home Beneath The Stars
    A Very Tenuous Grasp Of History
    Aviary
    Beyond 10000
    Bistik Ayam
    Brandy Reinke
    Celeste Hurst
    Cold
    Deron Eckert
    Dispatches From A Red County
    Donna Obeid
    Flash Fiction
    Garnet Juniper Nelson
    Ha Kiet Chau
    Illegal Fireworks Destroy Oakland Home In Fire
    Imperfect
    Jenny Severyn
    Joanne Esser
    Jonathan Fletcher
    Kale Choo Hanson
    Mariana's Headstone
    Medina
    Micro Essay
    Miss October 1976
    Negatives
    Nora Gupta
    Olivia Demac
    Orb
    Oz Hardwick
    Prose Poetry
    Reece Gritzmacher
    Self-Portrait As God Of Hope
    Suppose I Stopped Running
    Swampland
    The Hoax
    The Things He Does That Have No Words
    Whitney Schmidt
    Zach Keali'i Murphy

    RSS Feed


Picture

Glassworks is a publication of
​Rowan University's Master of Arts in Writing
260 Victoria Street • Glassboro, New Jersey 08028 
[email protected]

​All Content on this Site (c) 2025 Glassworks