by Keti Shea
red canoe
My feet dangle, toes
dance above the uterine floor. Strangled
by the weight of a dry drowning
I think it’s called, any parent’s
worst fears—what if what if what
if I cannot save myself from
the ugly web of tangled
thoughts. Death to thinking,
death by overthinking. My friend
floats in the wet murky waters
again—fists closed, toes kicking at the
slick tissue walls. She dances, skims
the surface of a lake clotted with
lily pad faces—unblinking vegetal
stare. In our last earthly moments
we were ten again as we rowed a red
wooden canoe across this dream lake,
shoulder freckles kissing. I see her
in every lily pad.
breakthrough pain
Curse of the redhaired Irish genes—
I can never get numb enough.
I tried alcohol and hunger
and men who will leave me.
I tried ripping leg muscles
on mile after mile.
I make up poems in the
dentist’s chair to keep
from choking on
spit and blood.
The nerve pain reminds me
of home.
5150
I write on my library
hold slip while
the schizophrenic mumbles
his grievances to himself.
I keep mine inside
my head so the world
believes me sane. Only
the schizophrenic knows
I’m not.
baby bunnies
The cat carries her kill in a
pink yowling mouth, lays the
baby bunny from under the woodpile—
an altar at the foot of my daughter’s bed.
She cries clutching the cat,
seeing cruelty with her innocent-blue
eyes, and I, having known the violence of a
mother’s love, let her weep.
heat lightning
heat lightning at the horizon dances in the rain like
fingertips along the humps of her spine why is human
touch hot and dangerous and a pain like death she
wonders as she dabs makeup over her bruises black eye blue
eye bruised lips and hips like two commas to hold men’s tears
they cry from one hole she waits till morning to check
her reflection her eyes two lightning-struck scars sewn shut she is
so beautiful men want her want to be inside her only like how she
makes them feel as they trace their fingers across her ribs
down her thighs and into the hidden pot between, plucking
her xylophone cords to hear the twang she makes, she hates
this touch they think she loves.
Keti Shea is a lawyer and writer. Her work appears in Villain Era Lit, Wildroof Journal, Swim Press, and elsewhere. She is a two-time Best of the Net and Pushcart nominee. She lives with her husband and daughter in a historic nunnery in Fort Collins, Colorado. She is currently querying a memoir about medical gaslighting and undiagnosed neurodivergence. Instagram: @ketishea