Thin Glass

Thin Glass unfolds in the after-hours of a city: neon signs blinking, windows open to the street, sidewalks slick with rain. In this lyric coming-of-age, Degenaars writes with clarity and vulnerability about those caught between responsibility and abandon, love and self-erasure.

These poems follow a speaker in flux-lover, daughter, would-be mother-as she questions what it means to survive, and even celebrate, the in-between. “Despite all I’ve tried, I am myself. Still,” the speaker confesses, reckoning with a self she can’t quite shake.

Degenaars searches for meaning in the small details-hailing a cab, folding laundry, changing in a window. This is a collection about how ordinary life can break us open, an unforgettable meditation on what can’t be left behind. These poems are emotionally exact and quietly defiant; they explore how longing threatens and shapes us. “Who’d hide from this,” the speaker asks, “the almost tender-who’d dare?”

Author Biography

Christine Degenaars has work published in Cider Press Review, Epiphany, Rattle, Tar River Poetry, and elsewhere. She was nominated for the 2023 Pushcart Prize and in 2022 was selected as a semi-finalist in the 92Y Discovery Poetry Contest. She graduated from Hunter College with a Master of Fine Arts in Poetry. Thin Glass is her debut collection. She lives in New York.