Shoshauna Shy
Graveyard Shift
Cold floor colder
than my sweat,
his voice a Tennessee hush
at my ear, hand soft on my back
as if to say he will not hurt me
if he doesn’t have to so I know I got to do
my part to help him, show
I’m hardly breathing, not blinking,
not looking at his shoe either
with its swamp-bottom muddy canvas
and the torn maple leaf caught
between the laces.
Lying beyond his left foot is my notebook
with the chapter I was working-----Don’t get up
Don’t you move-----
He brushes a strand of hair from my forehead
same way Albert used to do.
My adrenaline pumps into the tip of the gun
at the back of my skull
and pulses with his.
As the buddy gets the cash drawer open,
my jaw hugs the tile so their smoothly-mounded
whispers won’t turn into mountain peaks,
so that finger on the trigger won’t become
a comma, so this man who smells
of axle grease and Old Spice
won’t be the exclamation point
at the end of my story.
Something slides, falls over, a door slams,
feet pound down the hall.
I press my fingertips to the floor until dawn
fills the room with the cleanest light.
Days later, the detective wants me
to pick him out of a night-sweep line-up,
the one with a moustache
and an upturned collar.
The one who decided
not to kill me.
I say he isn’t there.
Having Stayed Late for Enrichment Club
Up Steeplechase Hill
the school route home
Girly Girl Ricker wants
to butt-fuck you
sniper’s hiss from
five yards behind
wreathed with snickers,
fat whispers, slippery guffaws.
Paralysis a brick upon each shoe;
I consider jay
walking but the street’s stitched
with cars, debate a swift shift
to a less-traveled road –
but if they pivot, too? I keep
my pace steady, chin pinned
to the crest
of this never-ending lurch,
my tongue rigor mortis
on its sawdust bed.
Fast-forward to Father
in his chair with Walt
Whitman, Mother
and her easel
in the sunflower garden.
Don’t let panic show
its rabbit pulse in my eyes;
don’t turn me towards faces I’ll
recog-
Girly Girl Hey Ricker wants
Ricker wants
"Graveyard Shift" first published in Wisconsin People & Ideas, fall 2010; "Having Stayed Late for Enrichment Club" first published by Phoebe, 2002.
Bio
Shoshauna Shy is the founder of the Poetry Jumps Off the Shelf program and the Woodrow Hall Jumpstart Award. Her work has been published online recently at Long Story Short, and in numerous print journals nationwide. She works for the Wisconsin Humanities Council in Madison, Wisconsin.