Shoshauna
Shy
Shoshauna Shy at the age of nineteen
Comments by Editor Sharon Waller Knutson
I was hooked on Shoshauna Shy’s poetry after reading her stunning poem which appeared in Poetry 180, a Random House paperback edited by the then U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins.
BRINGING MY SON
TO THE POLICE STATION
TO BE FINGERPRINTED
My lemon-colored
whisper-weight blouse
with keyhole closure
and sweetheart neckline is tucked
into a pastel silhouette skirt
with side-slit vents
and triplicate pleats
when I realize in the sunlight
through the windshield
that the cool yellow of this blouse clashes
with the buttermilk heather in my skirt
which makes me slightly queasy
however
the periwinkle in the pattern on the sash
is sufficiently echoed by the twill uppers
of my buckle-snug sandals
while the accents on my purse
pick up the pink
in the button stitches
and then as we pass
through Weapons Check
it’s reassuring to note
how the yellows momentarily mesh
and make an overall pleasing
composite
I began googling her and found powerful poems that moved me such as:
HIS FATHER
The trooper on the doorstep caught
her still in her pajamas
and all that mattered instantly
was having their son with her
Holding David to her
before he got to the schoolyard
where a teacher would have heard
If she had turned further to the left
she would have grabbed a sweater
and not taken her bathrobe off the hook
not worn its peppermint laughter
the flush of tears burning to her jaw
as she pedaled with the traffic
sorting through the children
as they went streaming over sidewalks
till she saw their boy on Kenting Road
saw his yellow sweatshirt
and wanting to compress the space
stretched like a grave between them
she coasted up the curb then braked
and dropped her bike before him
his face twisting with confused surprise
his mouth a drawbridge falling
made her wish she could hit rewind
and erase the entire morning
for she knew now he would always wear
this Christmas candy bathrobe
and these words like bullets behind her teeth
that she couldn’t swallow down
Since we both wrote accessible narrative poetry, when I was looking for a publisher for my first chapbook, I contacted the publisher of Shoshauna’s chapbook, Slide into Light, Moon Journal Press and Mary H. Ber, editor, published my chapbook, Dancing With a Scorpion in 2006.
In 2020, I was delighted when Shoshauna commented that she was impressed with my poems on Verse-Virtual and I emailed her to thank her. Since then we have become poetry buddies, sharing our lives and our poetry through emails, exchanging books and supporting each other’s poetry on various sites. She wrote a blurb for my book, What the Clairvoyant Doesn’t Say and I wrote a tribute poem to her and another poet, Joe Cottonwood, “Joe, Shoshauna and Sharon” which was first published on Red Eft Review where all three of us have published poems.
https://redeftreview.blogspot.com/2021/08/joe-shoshauna-and-sharon-by-sharon.html
Shoshauna’s poetry fascinates me because although she writes in her own signature storyteller style, she always freshens her poems up with unique imagery, a quick wit and a twist I never see coming. I am proud to publish Shoshauna’s three powerful unpublished poems.
ILLINOIS IMPORTS
FROM KENTUCKY
I fell for all of my best friend’s brothers,
their noses sloping like ski jumps at Tyrol
Basin; was enthralled by her mother who
let us in the kitchen any time of the day.
If we were hungry at midnight, we got
Kraft Mac-n-Cheese; could even make
breakfast out of Coke and Fudgsicles.
Her cousins from Kentucky teased each
other by saying You so ugly a train sees you
then takes a dirt road!
Her aunt said, when drawing a wild deuce
in Gin Rummy, I’m happy as a tornado
in a trailer park, all the aunts stringing fliptops
popped off cans of beer to make curtains
that hung from doorjambs to the floor
which took half of the summer.
The next to oldest brother whose eye focused
off-kilter because of one clumsy Christmas
with a BB gun, shot pool with us in the basement
after school, came sledding Lyons Hill.
When the radio played and the Casinos sang
about coffee with a kiss for a million years,
it was him I pictured with me in married bathrobes.
My boss squeezes quarters, her father claimed,
till the eagles scream, digging in his pockets
to show me one of them.
Even now decades later–the house up for sale,
the parents long gone–if the hot wind’s from the south
and it hasn’t rained all week, I still hear their vowels
stretch like a month of Sundays It’s so dry,
them trees yonder are bribin’ the dogs!
A FORM OF FAME
You wander through
a secondhand bookstore
in a town you didn’t know
was on any map, population
900, a four-day drive from home
when there on the shelf is one
of your poetry collections,
and the table of contents
is cocoa-stained, some pages
dog-eared, the back cover
slightly bowed.
You buy it for 89 cents
so you can read the words
some stranger scribbled
in the margins.
ARTIST’S RETREAT
ON THE ISLAND
The first week featured Ariel,
a weaver from Tel Aviv,
her cabin flanked by willows,
bed double-wide, bowed deep.
The next session presented Gertraud
with her wool skeins from Berlin,
and after that a novelist
from New York named Evelyn.
Sunday afternoons delivered
a fresh crop to the grounds
and Jeremy who taught wood carving
with his touch for symmetry
chose one woman for conversation,
recreation and release.
Someone to smooth his ego,
dig out the burled knots
since he got pitched asunder
by wife numéro three.
Long years of faithfulness he gave,
and he’d been played the fool.
While there were rules against gate-crashing
anybody’s solitude
as they each cocooned in cabins
with canvas, pen or loom,
Jeremy located one good match who,
primed by his flirtations
welcomed an evening visitor,
for sublime diversion.
The best candidates sported wedding bands
and emitted joie de vivre
so in the fragrant summer woods
it took little to spark intrigue:
a lifted brow, a few soft words,
compliments for creations.
Becca---Heather---Margueritte
all tumbled in succession.
Saturday farewells tender,
then Sundays found him freshened.
No other summer bested this one
with its succulent rotations
like the platters in the dining hall,
abundance on display.
Jeremy slid melon between his teeth,
winked at Susan and her canapé.
"His Father" was published in Homestead Review and in her fourth collection What the Postcard Didn't Say
"Bringing My Son to the Police Station to be Fingerprinted" was first published by Poetry Northwest and then by the Library of Congress.
These poems can be both delightful and ominous. A challening combination. But each time they sent me back to read again. I'm glad I did. Congratulations on these--and for Sharon's poem tucked in among them and fitting perfectly.
ReplyDeleteBeen a fan for a while, for all the reasons everyone says: "succulent rotations" could describe the poems themselves. Sweeteheart/whisper, combined with the topic proves these poems to be well observed and delightful to the mouth and ear. Well done, Poets!
ReplyDelete