ISSN: 1941-4137
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
Steph Sundermann-Zinger (she/they) is a queer poet living and writing in the Baltimore area. Her work explores themes of identity, relationship, and connection with the natural world and has appeared or is forthcoming in Apple Valley Review, The Avenue, Blue Unicorn, Little Patuxent Review, Lines + Stars, Literary Mama, Split Rock Review, Writers Resist, and other journals. She was the 2023 recipient of the Ellen Conroy Kennedy Poetry Prize and a fall 2024 Writer in Residence for Yellow Arrow Publishing.
September 16, 2026
Independence Pass
Six weeks after my father’s death, I am standing
above the treeline where two points of the world meet,
the wind twisting my hair into a child’s
thicket of knots. Patches of snow
cling to a bygone season, the rest having slipped
into a vernal pool thick with midges, fairy shrimp, protozoa
filmy as December breath. Snow will fall again here,
enough to close the Pass, to spit and swallow itself
down the mountain in great, roaring mouthfuls. For now,
the rocks are alive with gentians, daisies,
alpine yellowcress. I wonder if their roots
drink from two oceans, ponder the confusion of a moon
hanging over this place where one thing
joins another, the pull of divergent tides. My children
look like chess pieces in their black windbreakers,
hoods up, mouths open, sucking in lungfuls
of needle-thin air. Never having had a father,
they don’t understand the loss of one, although
they hug me when I ask, and press small tokens
into my hands—a heart-shaped stone, violet scribble
of wildflowers—gifts from this ragged hill
that stands forever in two places, and survives.
Glass: A Journal of Poetry is published weekly by Glass Poetry Press.
All contents © the author.
All contents © the author.
