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

The Elephant Myth

​by Jessica E. Lindberg

My father was born in India, but
he does not need elephant knickknacks
to remind him. We, his three kids,
got that wrong. In our childhoods
of gift-giving, when we could have picked
socks or a sharpened chisel
we went with a miniature elephant
carved out of tagua nut. We went
teak pachyderm to crowd the mantel
with the rest of his stocky herd.
I could identify the hunch
of an Asian elephant’s back,
the African’s larger ears draped
like gray tablecloths. He insisted
we get the species right, at least,
although I see now his aim was less
wisdom and more population control.
On birthdays, he might have liked
to make us his famous pecan pancakes
on an unscathed griddle, but
we just gave him more elephants.
Like the blind men in the parable,
we ran our hands over his foreign birth story
and felt pieces—his mother’s scarlet
fever, her empty breasts, the manservant
spooning rice pudding—
we made of these portions, his whole elephant.
We gave it back to him again and again
as if to say here you are,
​you belong to us now, remember.
Picture

Jessica E. Lindberg teaches at a community college in the northwest Georgia mountains. She is up against the ten-year deadline to finish her Ph.D in poetry at Georgia State University. Her work has appeared in Mississippi Review, Sand Hills Literary Magazine, Old Red Kimono, and sometimes on her parent’s refrigerator. Jessica and her husband raised two sons and enjoyed it so much they had another boy, sixteen years after the first two.

A 2018 Pushcart Prize nominee, Lindberg's poem can be found in Issue 17 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
Photo used under Creative Commons from erdbeernaut