Moonlight paints us into corpses
as we lie tangled in bed. I cling to you
like a boy clings to his teddy bear
in darkness, listen
to crickets shake their rattles
over the splash of cars passing
through rain puddles. All night
I lie awake with you
relearning the curves of your flesh,
the satin brush of your hair, devour
your cologne as it rises like steam
from your skin. I hold
you until the moon is through—
when sunlight brushes flesh tones on me,
but leaves the gray tinge of an effigy on you.

©Shawn Nacona Stroud

♦This poem previously appeared in Issue 8 of Mississippi Crow Magazine.

One of my poems due to be published in the upcoming issue #8 of Mississippi Crow Magazine is being previewed on Page Turner along with the work of a few other poets and writers. Below is a link that you can follow to check it out:

Mississippi Crow Magazine issue 8 preview

(For my mother)

You were a Xerox of him,
nine months printed, the flesh
colored ink of the womb still
drying. I wanted to ball you
up and pitch you like trash
into the waste-bin, listen
as you crinkle out of existence,
and then hit the print button again.

©Shawn Nacona Stroud

*This poem was previously published in Issue #7 of the Mississippi Crow Magazine.

Abandoned skyscrapers, swamp foxtail raised
to sway along the tide-line. We weave
out to the Atlantic between you
like ants in the shadow of your steel-stems.

Beach sand grains our feet into sandpaper,
their crunch muffled as waves zip
the water’s edge shut. You creak
with the sea’s shove like harbored barges
groan their ropes along landing piers.

Only the seagulls make use of you now,
they roost on your ledges and speckle the toilet
of your walls. White streaks of indifference,
nobody cares to clean them off.

Gondoliers punt out among you,
steering their courses with fish splashes;
relics of the lost city of Venice, they dwindle
on the horizon. The torch clad hand they sail to
reaches out from the water like a drowning victim.

©Shawn Nacona Stroud

*This poem was previously published in Issue #7 of the Mississippi Crow Magazine.

After the cataclysm
you
………broke………..away
from me. For years
………the lands……….drifted
……………………across
……..the cold sea.
Fate…………..propelled
……………………….your plate
into another,
………………and you
…………………………connected
as we never could. You called
him Asia, and he praised you,
Africa. He impressed you
with his thick lush forests,
and danced on your sunbeaten
planes. Together
you and he watched the ice
form over me, alone in that
darkness, you named me

………………..Antarctica.

©Shawn Nacona Stroud

*This poem was previously published in Issue #7 of Mississippi Crow Magazine.

©Mississippi Crow Magazine

*Click on the image twice to make it large enough to read clearly.

Mother, we grew
in your neglected garden.
We survived for eight
long years as we choked
on the thick thwart
of your hate, it sucked
the soil nutrients from us.
We had barely bloomed
the day that you plucked us
from the dirt.

©Shawn Nacona Stroud

♦This poem was previously published in Issue #7 of the Mississippi Crow Magazine.