ISSN: 1941-4137
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
Rachel Bunting is a writer and artist living between the Delaware River and the Pine Barrens in Southern New Jersey. Her writing can be found in both print and online journals, including [PANK], Muzzle Magazine, Stirring: A Literary Collection, Hippocampus Magazine, and Wild Roof Journal. In 2025, she co-founded the journal Asterales: A Journal of Arts and Letters with fellow writer and artist Donna Vorreyer. Rachel is currently at work on a memoir exploring how a relationship with the natural world helped her heal from trauma, for which she was awarded a 2022 Individual Fellowship in Prose from the New Jersey State Council for the Arts. She is easily distracted by birds.
Previously in Glass: A Journal of Poetry:
I remember that incredible night with the maps
Manifest
August 13, 2025
Event Horizon
After a line from Charles Baxter
I am incubating a black hole, today just a dark seed
but headed for something supermassive. I eat galaxies
one star at a time with unceasing appetite. Everything
has an event horizon, the boundary that, if crossed,
changes something1. Once a friend2 told me I was brittle.
I imagined a plinth weakened by fine lines, visibly unstable.
We were angry at the same moment, but not angry together3.
Perhaps there was a version of truth in his words, perhaps
my anger, rooted as it was in some cosmic dust, was leaking
from the pores of my face, my hands; perhaps I left a trail behind
me as I moved, stretching crisp light into a long diffuse tail4. Another
suggested I think of the world as categorically divided: enemies to be
discarded or good guys kept at arm’s length until exposed as enemies.
Is the first part so wrong, I ask, in a universe where nothing feels safe
as the sound of fire crackling in the pines5. When my anger returns,
it is not a white-hot supernova, no. It is the sad, irrevocable hunger
of being lonely. Watch closely: you can see a series of constellations
sizzling into darkness against my tongue, a small dark ring there
the only evidence they ever shone.
1 See: the way a high tide mark changes with each advancing storm
2 The dictionary includes no single word for a person you once loved so deeply you would trust them to care for your blind cat, but who transgressed your threshold in an irreparable way
3 See: ambiguous loss
4 See: spaghetiffication, or maybe a symptom of disorganized attachment
5 See: the very first bonfire I ever saw, Camp Matollionequay, July 1988
The current political climate has made certain relationships feel entirely untenable. After the loss of several friendships, I spent some time thinking about why and how we hurt each other, intentionally or otherwise, and how it feels when we come through the grief.
Glass: A Journal of Poetry is published weekly by Glass Poetry Press.
All contents © the author.
All contents © the author.
