ISSN: 1941-4137
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
Burgi Zenhaeusern (she/her) is the author of the chapbook Behind Normalcy (CityLit Press, 2020) and a translation co-editor of the poetry anthology Knocking on the Door of The White House (zozobra publishing, 2017). Most recently, her work appeared in DIAGRAM, Sugar House Review, Little Patuxent Review, Moist Poetry, and as a broadside (Ashville Poetry Press, Broadside Contest 2024, runner-up). Originally from Switzerland, she lives outside D.C. in Maryland.
July 9, 2025
Two-legged Sunna
on the run: no chariot, no horses, just two
long sticks a child might draw,
splayed down the windshield. She keeps me warm
in this quiet street with closed facades
strung to power lines, still and naked
branches against the late winter sky. I’m waiting
for another of my child’s lessons to end, a book
unopened in my lap, the surf of traffic breaking.
Sunna, it is said, is chased by the wolf-beast
across the sky to the end of time, when it will
devour her and what is left of her brilliance
after many eclipses. Her sometimes frightening
heat in tow Sunna rushes on. She must, if she is
to make it through another day.
Before her end, she is granted a newly brilliant
daughter to continue on her path. So it is said.
On the backseat, the squished bag of pretzels
crackles its unfolding. A crumb tips
from one crease into another softly, un-
predictably, unavoidably. I think of minefields
and my child who has learned to tiptoe.
The poem makes free use of old Germanic myths about the sun from the Wikipedia entry for Sól (Old Norse) / Sunna (Old High German). In German, moon and sun are masculine and feminine nouns, respectively (i.e. der Mond, die Sonne). No Greco-Roman influence has been able to erase the female sun from my visualizations of it.
Glass: A Journal of Poetry is published weekly by Glass Poetry Press.
All contents © the author.
All contents © the author.
