Back to the Beginning

 Shoshauna Shy

 

Writing Poetry Was My Midlife Crisis
I met up with poetry in my middle school library. There was an enchanting alcove where all the poetry books were kept. But I wasn’t drawn into writing my own until I was in my 40s and my son reached middle school himself. It wasn’t like I “decided” to write poetry. More to the point, I was ambushed by a poem when walking home from work one day. I was going through an emotional upheaval that mirrored something experienced as a young child, and somehow five stanzas of a poem appeared before me without any effort on my part. I was stunned. I wrote it down and brought it to a friend who was married to the poet Ron Wallace, and I said, “I’m not sure what this is. Is it a poem?” 
Two years later, I had enough to comprise a chapbook, and on a whim, sent it to Jenifer Bosveld of Pudding House Publications in Johnstown, Ohio. As far as my trajectory as a poet, I felt like I was still in kindergarten, so imagine my surprise when she accepted it for publication!
My first-ever poems published were in a small one-man journal operation called Double-Entendre out of Plano, Texas. One of them was about my son at age 11, and I got the acceptance letter on his birthday. He became an English professor specializing in works at the intersection of poetics and critical theory, so we share a love of language. He gives me feedback on my writing.
In 2003, a poem of mine titled “Bringing My Son to the Police Station to Be Fingerprinted” was published by Poetry Northwest in Everett, Washington, then got selected by Billy Collins for his collection titled Poetry 180, which is used in high school and college classrooms around the country. I still get contacted by teachers and students wanting to know the inside scoop on that particular poem. 
I thought starting to write poetry in my 40s as my way of having a “midlife crisis.”
MIDLIFE
I’ve met almost all my goals:
The Victorian Tudor is built
with its towers and passages,
and the man whose approach
fills me with anticipation
is the man I married.
Our kids earn spots on honor rolls,
slots on select soccer teams.
Sheer luck placed me in a job
I welcome Monday mornings.
Have I reason to doubt my goal
to get published can be reached?
I aim to have it happen before my son
grows a moustache.
But I must work hard–Yesterday
he crossed the bay, one boy
in a boatful of girls.



DAUGHTER IN THIRD GRADE
Eight-and-a-half
the approach full throttle
Like a tiger that leaps
through a hoop of fire

she needs the heat
so a day in summer
can easily mean

a jagged scrape
in a collision with bricks
A peppery burn
from a juniper bush
A purpled swell
from a bicycle jam

but fiercer are
those marks that scar:

the wedge of white
below one eye
due to window glass
and brother’s smash
Down her center
a threading stitch
when a surgeon’s splice
force-freed death’s grip



THE INTRUSION

No one can decipher the X-rays
locate the infection
explain why blood cells
are so laissez-faire
but white as ice
my third grader lay rigid
before the clinician
the radiologist and physician
-    tachycardic mesenteric
hematemesis perforation –
the intern on the fringes
taking copious notes
Wrap cuffs for pump pressure
Glide needles for fluids
Nothing child-like about her
Nothing innocent about fear

then bile black as coal
starts pouring from her mouth
The doctor rises to leave
muttering Might as well
I’m on my feet and the nurse
pats Now now They’ve sent
for the surgeon 
and she disappears

Then the intern kneels gently
and soto voce asks me
as if prompted along
by some private dare
She your only kid, ma’am?
and I know he’s not a parent
and I wish those words were words
my daughter didn’t have to hear



TO THE CLIENT
WHO TOLD ME
TO SNUFF THEIR CAT
IF HE GOT SICK WHILE
THEY’RE ON VACATION
IN JAMAICA

I hope your kids elect
to spend every Christmas
with their in-laws



POWER PLAY

My neighbor used to mow two strips
of my side yard
Now he’s mowing all the way to the pines

on the chance I’ll agree that’s a choice spot
for his new garage so he can get away
from the missus once in awhile

Of course means taking out those old pines
but that’s just dead space under there anyway

and seeing as how the launch is right around 
the corner, be smart to pour a little pad 
to park the boat

with space behind it for the fellas to pull in
Friday card nights, how ‘bout it

and over here at the kitchen door, lay some
brick pavers for the Weber grill, the half-barrel

Yessireebob, my neighbor has some mighty 
fine plans for my yard

And this row of barberry rockets I’m planting
will put ‘em six feet under