©Shawn Nacona Stroud

You are a bruising apple
that dangles near
the end of my limb.
My hold on you weakens
with the whistled pushes of wind.
Soon I’ll lose my grip:
a thunk on the ground
at my feet. Love finishes
like a season
that freezes once it’s complete.

©Shawn Nacona Stroud
♦This poem was previously published in the Winter 2009 issue of Up the Staircase.

©Shawn Nacona Stroud

Not even the moon can light
your path tonight, nor the stars
that wince down on you
like eyes behind which
a terrible migraine flexes the brain.
They are the eyes of Gods’
stupidly staring as they have
for centuries—you pay no mind.
You are lost to them in your death frock:
the whitened skin that settles in,
blooming on you the way a bruise
gradually darkens. The sky too
pales through our window squares,
from pink to blue
just like you. Ferrying
the sounds of birds and cars
into our bedroom where you lie
in a puddle of night sweats.
The sounds of 6:00 a.m. cumulate
as your breath rattles
to a halt. You are
porcelain now; a doll,
hardened all over as you cast
your death-stench about the room.
The cold you give makes a morgue-
slab out of our bed, and issues
from a realm as unattainable as life.

©Shawn Nacona Stroud

♦This poem received an honorable mention in April 2009 f0r the IBPC’s monthly winners.

©Shawn Nacona Stroud

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.

©Shawn Nacona Stroud

(Berlin- May 10th, 1933)

“Where they burn books, they will,
in the end, burn human beings too.” –Henrich Heine, 1822

They are an army on the march,
the students of Berlin, reverberated
footfalls fill the night that their torches flicker
into light before them, darkness opens
like a passage door—
folds closed again in their wake
leaving the streets blank with murk.

Their songs and cheers engulf the city
from the Opernplatz. They heft
armfuls and oxen carts stuffed with books;
pages rustle as they rattle past,
like witches on the way to the pyre. The fire moils,
flaps with the sound of a flag in wind,
throws odors of burnt-out houses into the air.

We watch from our windows above as they toss books
dried as sun cooked corpses into the flames
and bark out songs of victory while we pray,
clutching David’s star around our necks.
The stench of charred book flesh drifting
across the façade of Berlin
were words that Brecht, Kerr and Heine once penned
ascending to the heavens as embers.

©Shawn Nacona Stroud

♦This poem was chosen as an honorable mention winner for the 22nd Annual Anna Davidson Rosenberg Awards for Poems on the Jewish Experience

My poem “The Opernplatz” has been chosen as an honorable mention winner in the 22nd Annual Anna Davidson Rosenberg Awards for Poems on the Jewish Experience. I will post a link to the PDF  of all the winning poems when it is posted. There will be an awards ceremony and public reading of the 2008-2009 winners of the Anne Davidson Rosenberg Awards. The event is free and open to the public. Contact the JCCSF Box Office at 415-292-1233 to make reservations.

Sun, May 3 4:00 PM*Click on picture to link to website.

♦As of today, each week I will feature a piece of artwork or photography that I have come across while browsing the web that has captured me.  This week I am honored and very proud to feature the photography of author, editor, artist, and photographer Mary Deal. I ran across Mary’s work on facebook and just fell in love with the realism and use of color in her artwork, and her keen eye stunning shots in the photography that she captures. I truly respect her work and I am very proud to share it with everyone.

Na Pali Coastline, Kauai, Hawaii

©Mary Deal

   Mary’s Website: http://www.writeanygenre.com/