Glassworks
  • home
  • about
    • history
    • staff bios
    • community outreach
    • affiliations
    • contact
  • current issue
    • read Issue 25
    • letter from the editor
    • looking glass fall 2022
    • interview with Yuvi Zalkow
  • 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 25
    • letter from the editor
    • looking glass fall 2022
    • interview with Yuvi Zalkow
  • 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

If I Could,I Would Have

Named Myself Honeysuckle

by Robin Gow

after the bush a block away,
                 and how Mom and I pinched
the necks of the white flowers
                precise                  thumb      finger
sweet     water      full mouths.

I was hungry for a name
                like that,
like something to suck down quickly,
                 like yellow word,
like bugs humming,
                like a tick ambling
behind my ear and planting
                 its obsidian head,

a jewel dunked in blood.

Back at home,
we pulled the tick out
                with tweezers and
I told Mom I was afraid of
                the honeysuckle bush.
She said next time
we’ll check for ticks
                     before leaving.

Lying awake, in bed,
I thought of that plant mess
                 live green            entangled
                 in the waists of trees
                                by the side of the road
                 choruses of stems
                 dripping               damp tongues
and I decided that if people
               called me honeysuckle
                             
instead of Sarah

I would have a kind of
                inherent wildness,
an absence of fear

a sopping fire,
                I'd be sugar teeth,
                                a grit girl,

a head to be plucked from
               scarlet creek.
Picture

Robin Gow's poetry has recently been published in POETRY, The Gateway Review, and Tilde. He is a graduate student at Adelphi University pursuing an M.F.A. in Creative Writing. He is the Editor at Large for Village of Crickets, Social Media Coordinator for Oyster River Pages and interns for Porkbelly Press. He is and out and proud bisexual transgender man passionate about LGBT issues. He loves poetry that lilts in and out of reality and his queerness is also the central axis of his work. 
A 2019 Pushcart Prize nominee, Gow's poem can be found in Issue 19 of Glassworks.

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) 2022 glassworks