My sister leans against the stove, nibbling olives. Like a Rossetti painting she is pure mischief and melancholy. She is not me, but she is part of me. She is everything, and nothing. She is flesh, and fault. Part solitude, part social like an ocean with boats bobbing on it. Her face so sad it breaks plates, the floor littered with pits and tears.
We eat elitses, the sweet Crete varietal;
My sister is backlit from the open window
Outside, the sky spirals in a pink
© Simone Muench
Simone Muench is the associate editor for ACM (Another Chicago Magazine). Her work has appeared in Crab Orchard Review, Many Mountains Moving, Southern Poetry Review, Bloomsbury Review, Calyx, Luna, etc. She comes from Shreveport, Louisiana but received her B.A. and M.A. from the University of Colorado. Her manuscript “Love’s Apostrophes” won the 1998 Sheila-Na-Gig Chapbook Contest. She recently was selected to receive an Illinois Arts Council Award for a poem published in Fish Stories. |
Every story we publish is unsolicited, and 86% of the stories we accepted last year came to us directly from the writer. One of the most respected short-story journals in print, Glimmer Train Stories is represented in recent editions of the Pushcart Prize, New Stories from the Midwest, O.Henry, New Stories from the South, Best of the West, and Best American Short Stories anthologies. Glimmer Train Press, 4763 SW Maplewood, PO Box 80430, Portland, OR 97280-1430 USA |