Shortcut to Thief River Falls, Kelsay Books, 2026
by Shoshauna Shy
By Editor Sharon Waller Knutson
Sassy,
smart and satirical is the best way to describe Shoshauna Shy's new
full-length poetry collection, “Shortcut to Thief River Falls. ” I was
charmed and chuckling and couldn't put the book down until I read it
cover to cover. I was impressed with the way she tackles the difficult
subjects of adoption, separation and divorce as well as elderly romance
and the realities of being a poet and artist with her signature style
and sardonic wit. Shoshauna says in the book she is first and foremost a
fiction writer so most of the poems are written from the point of view
of someone else and only a few of them are autobiographical. I can
always recognize a Shoshauna Shy poem by its unique metaphors, sharp wit
and the element of surprise. She grabs my attention with intriguing
titles and surprises me by swerving in a different direction. I would
have bought the book based on the tile "Shortcut to Thief River Falls"
without even knowing what it was about. Shoshauna admitted she came up
with the title first and then wrote a poem to fit it. I have been
hooked on Shoshauna’s storytelling style since I read, “Bringing my Son
to the Police Station to be Fingerprinted” selected for the Poetry 180
Library of Congress program launched by Billy Collins when he was US
Poet Laureate. In reading her latest collection, I admire the talent,
imagination and research it took to write persona poems about adoption,
separation and divorce since she was raised by her birth parents who
were married for seventy years before their deaths and she has been
married for forty-six years. Yet, her characters and stories are as
authentic and believable in the persona poems as her autobiographical
poems.
I’ll let the synopsis, blurbs on the back of the book and some favorite poems speak for themselves.
About the book:
Shoshauna
Shy writes of belonging, the ties that bind, and the longing for
connection when those ties are severed by adoption, divorce or
estrangement.
Praise from her peers:
Storyteller Joe Cottonwood, author of “buck naked is the opposite of hate” writes:
Shoshauna
Shy’s poems come in a turtle-tough shell with a soft soul inside. From
the stony mysteries of adoption to the peachy flesh of romantic
connection (with its tooth-breaking pit), like the folks at her
imaginary poetry recital, you’ll feel “those sweet little throat-clucks /
the audience makes as they resonate / with the final line.”
Catherine Jagoe, author of "Praying to the God of Small Things" and "Bloodroot" writes:
Shortcut
to Thief River Falls is a clear-eyed and compassionate exploration of
the ties that bind and what happens when they are severed by adoption,
divorce, abandonment, or estrangement. In these wise, generous, and
often funny poems, a protean “I” frequently records moments when a life
starts to unravel, an irrevocable decision is made—or, conversely, when a
character recognizes the blessing of a deep bond to a partner or child.
While the longing for human connection is everywhere in this book, its
intermingling of persona poems with personal lyric blurs the boundary
between self and other, connecting all the speakers in a capacious
imagined community that is its own form of healing.
Ronnie
Hess, past-president of the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets and former
Chair of the Wisconsin Poet Laureate Commission writes:
Genealogy
has become an industry where technology and science revolutionize what
we uncover about a shared past. In this affecting, wide-ranging poetry
collection, Shoshauna Shy mines the emotional terrain DNA results can’t
touch–the ache for both connection and disjuncture, and the meaning of
belonging and abandonment among children, lovers, mothers and fathers,
both biological and adoptive.
The 134-page collection contains 65 poems and is divided in six sections.
I share with you some of my favorite poems including two autobiographical poems about her mother-in-law who died one year short of 100-years-old.
The Adoptee Tells Her Story
I elbowed in
on their flirtation,
their catch-as-catch-can
drunken immersion
one night in September
on a silver lake.
I was the spark
not stomped to ash;
the wind lifting curtains
that knocked over the lamp;
the party crasher no one
wanted to bounce.
I slid down a shortcut
to Thief River Falls
until eviction, a lay-off,
a bout of colic
conspired to give me
the boot.
The Conversation,
Asbury Avenue 1959
My mother informed me
that my first best friend,
the five-year-old next door
with whom I did cartwheels,
traded Jujubes and Chuckles,
called for yard-to-yard
was adopted.
There was such a thing?
Children were movable,
removable, interchangeable?
Was this why Mary Sarah
had no brothers nor sisters,
looked like neither parent
way older than mine;
why her residence in a bedroom
wallpapered with roses
seemed incidental?
As if there were a clause
in a 3-ply contract:
Subject to revocation
upon due cause
(No) Return to Sender
When you’re adopted, the appearance
of envelopes with unmarked photos inside
tugs you into days of rehearsing different
combinations of verbs, adverbs, pronouns
to unleash during the ride to school or in
the bakery aisle at Winthrup’s Stop & Shop
to a grown-up who has proven that despite
holding all the winning cards, they are not
about to place them on display.
He or she might put you on display in hand-
knitted cardigans boasting reindeers, give you
bananas sliced into pinwheels, allowance for
dish duty, but when it comes to facts
and figures and all the many who what whys
up goes that cyclone fence that won’t bend
even when you curl both hands over the links
and shake. Envelopes, plain white ones,
with photos of bare-legged children on tricycles,
men wearing flannel shirts, wives with ponytails
slide out of a basement desk drawer or surface
from a hatbox on a closet floor or arrive
in the mail addressed to the household
by surname without a note, an explanation
or return address so you invent farmhouses
for them–waffle breakfasts before the harvesting
of hay, or jungle gym whoops between orange
Popsicles in backyards where cocker spaniels chase,
hating the carrier for not bringing a sequel,
the machine that smeared the clue of a postmark,
wondering how to recover those consonants
and vowels, locate the place of its starting origin,
what route will allow your return.
The Week He Asked
for a Trial Separation
She had not realized
that she had come to relish
the heft of her braid
hanging down her spine
slapping a rhythm on
each cheek of her buttocks
as she jogged the bike route
that met Fairview Lane
How she savored its swing
this rope between shoulders
needing its weight against
the skin of thin shirts
in the same way cats need
their tails for balance
Once They Decided on Divorce
First it was a tent flap.
He whispered to her from one side
and she responded.
Then it was a screen door.
Although she kept her back to him,
she still listened.
Next a storm door.
He had to shout to be heard.
She didn’t shout back.
After that, an oaken entry
with a brass knocker and kickplate.
She never answered.
Now it was a bank vault.
Not even their daughter was willing
to carry his messages inside.
One Thing You Never Want
to Learn the Hard Way
Don’t place an order for roses
to be sent to your wife
with a card that claims Darlin’
I’ll do anything you say
at the same time you order
asters for the neighbor
whose cat you ran over
on your bicycle last night
Joni forgive me
They're joy-riding again–my
mother-in-law and the man
across the hall whom she met
at the Angel Park potluck.
Daughters forbid she drive
her Buick but he still has his,
and she tells him when it's safe
to accelerate through the yellow
before it goes red.
They picnic on Evergreen Island
if there's a table in the shade,
cruise to the family cabin to catch
sunset on the pier, to her childhood
church and farmstead before brunch
at The Silky Spoon.
As if his were a 50's Skylark
with fins and dog dish hubcaps,
and he wore jeans with the cuffs
rolled up, Lucky Strikes tucked
at his bicep, her cardigan buttoned
like a cape, blonde curls
streaming backwards.
It's a pandemic summer slick
with Purell, but the wind washes
them both clean.
The rosebush they bring to our patio
blooms beyond the season's first frost.
Marriage Proposal @ Age 98
He asks her again–
she ten years widowed
after seven married decades,
her name engraved on a tombstone
where her first husband lies.
Marry me please
this one bringing her peaches,
not wanting to die with no record
of their love.
And love him she does
for his yes-let’s-go lightness, dapper
countenance, easy humor, caring
kindness, pious nature.
But she is also fond of their separate
apartments; the freedom for holidays
with her own blood kin;
breakfast at six or maybe 10:30.
Besides, there’s that plot
on the other side of town,
someone waiting.
Please contact Shoshauna via shoshaunashy@gmail.com for copies
To read Shoshauna’s poem that got me hooked:
https://allpoetry.com/poem/14374591-Bringing-My-Son-To-The-Police-Station-To-Be-Fingerprinted-by-Shoshauna-Shy
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