Tag: We Ran Rapturous

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: We Ran Rapturous by Shannon Sankey

HAIR

A tree will catch a snapped twig in the
fork of a healthy branch, god forbid it
reach the earth. The twig will balance
there for seasons. It is the same with
me, in the shower, with—what unit? a
handful?—a violence of curls, several
ounces of dull hair in my fists (horror
of lifting one’s own limb, horror of
autonomous weight). I do a terrible
math: what fraction of the whole? A
strand on the tweed coat of a lover
is romantic. I am not talking about
that, nor the common imposition
of a choked drain. I am telling you
about the tree that collects its ejected
parts, the tree that postures for
passersby a crooked kind of flowering.

This selection comes from the book, We Ran Rapturous, available from The Atlas Review.  Purchase your copy here! Our curator for this selection is Natalie Giarratano.

Shannon Sankey is the author of We Ran Rapturous (The Atlas Review, forthcoming 2019). Her poems have appeared at Poets.org, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, the minnesota review, Puerto del Sol, Sugar House Review, Barrelhouse, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of a 2017 Academy of American Poets Prize and a 2019 SAFTA residency. She holds an MFA from Chatham University, where she was the Whitford Fellow. She is the founder of Stranded Oak Press. www.shannonsankey.com / @shansankey

Natalie Giarratano is the author of Big Thicket Blues (Sundress Publications, 2017) and Leaving Clean, winner of the 2013 Liam Rector First Book Prize in Poetry (Briery Creek Press, 2013). Her poems have appeared in Beltway Poetry, Tupelo Quarterly, Tinderbox, and American Literary Review, among others. She edits and lives in Fort Collins, Colorado, with her partner and daughter and is the city’s poet laureate. Twitter handle is @shansankey

 

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: We Ran Rapturous by Shannon Sankey

BOWEL REST

At once I am slack-jawed and suckling,
soft-toothed and dumb-tongued, gnawing at nothing.

I draw liquid protein through a plastic straw,
sick of my own sounds in a house with no days.

My mother ransacks the kitchen of still-good boxes and bags,
stacks cans on the countertops, steals away every stale thing,

and I open the refrigerator door just to stand
in the bleached-blue, brilliant, annihilating light.

This selection comes from the book, We Ran Rapturous, available from The Atlas Review.  Purchase your copy here! Our curator for this selection is Natalie Giarratano.

Shannon Sankey is the author of We Ran Rapturous (The Atlas Review, forthcoming 2019). Her poems have appeared at Poets.org, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, the minnesota review, Puerto del Sol, Sugar House Review, Barrelhouse, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of a 2017 Academy of American Poets Prize and a 2019 SAFTA residency. She holds an MFA from Chatham University, where she was the Whitford Fellow. She is the founder of Stranded Oak Press. www.shannonsankey.com / @shansankey

Natalie Giarratano is the author of Big Thicket Blues (Sundress Publications, 2017) and Leaving Clean, winner of the 2013 Liam Rector First Book Prize in Poetry (Briery Creek Press, 2013). Her poems have appeared in Beltway Poetry, Tupelo Quarterly, Tinderbox, and American Literary Review, among others. She edits and lives in Fort Collins, Colorado, with her partner and daughter and is the city’s poet laureate. Twitter handle is @shansankey

 

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: We Ran Rapturous by Shannon Sankey

ORB WEAVER

I watch her tear down
her iridescent architecture
when she goes
hungry in the dark.
She gathers back
her own bright protein
with almost arms
into her self, into
her somewhere mouth.
And it looks to be
and it has to be enough.

This selection comes from the book, We Ran Rapturous, available from The Atlas Review.  Purchase your copy here! Our curator for this selection is Natalie Giarratano.

Shannon Sankey is the author of We Ran Rapturous (The Atlas Review, forthcoming 2019). Her poems have appeared at Poets.org, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, the minnesota review, Puerto del Sol, Sugar House Review, Barrelhouse, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of a 2017 Academy of American Poets Prize and a 2019 SAFTA residency. She holds an MFA from Chatham University, where she was the Whitford Fellow. She is the founder of Stranded Oak Press. www.shannonsankey.com / @shansankey

Natalie Giarratano is the author of Big Thicket Blues (Sundress Publications, 2017) and Leaving Clean, winner of the 2013 Liam Rector First Book Prize in Poetry (Briery Creek Press, 2013). Her poems have appeared in Beltway Poetry, Tupelo Quarterly, Tinderbox, and American Literary Review, among others. She edits and lives in Fort Collins, Colorado, with her partner and daughter and is the city’s poet laureate. Twitter handle is @shansankey

 

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: We Ran Rapturous by Shannon Sankey

CRICKET MAMA

warm yourself
on the front porch
post-shift

open your knees
and gather up
your house dress

air out the stick
and stink and
stuck of work

arch your back
point your wet
center at the sun

don’t care who
sees don’t sing
for nobody nobody

This selection comes from the book, We Ran Rapturous, available from The Atlas Review.  Purchase your copy here! Our curator for this selection is Natalie Giarratano.

Shannon Sankey is the author of We Ran Rapturous (The Atlas Review, forthcoming 2019). Her poems have appeared at Poets.org, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, the minnesota review, Puerto del Sol, Sugar House Review, Barrelhouse, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of a 2017 Academy of American Poets Prize and a 2019 SAFTA residency. She holds an MFA from Chatham University, where she was the Whitford Fellow. She is the founder of Stranded Oak Press. www.shannonsankey.com / @shansankey

Natalie Giarratano is the author of Big Thicket Blues (Sundress Publications, 2017) and Leaving Clean, winner of the 2013 Liam Rector First Book Prize in Poetry (Briery Creek Press, 2013). Her poems have appeared in Beltway Poetry, Tupelo Quarterly, Tinderbox, and American Literary Review, among others. She edits and lives in Fort Collins, Colorado, with her partner and daughter and is the city’s poet laureate. Twitter handle is @shansankey

 

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: We Ran Rapturous by Shannon Sankey

BROWN HOUSE AUBADE

Here, my work was tenderness. The pulse of
dark beans to loam. Heavy carafe, heap and spit.
My work: a queue of cups on her windowsill.
If she wouldn’t drink, fine. I left them to cool.
Here was my mother dying, her bed a boat on
her breath. I thought I might reanimate her. I
knew vaguely of her vertebrae: a herniation:
fentanyl patches: a gun in a bag and a box of
bullets. It was beside the point. I believed the
brown house would kill her. She slept for days
without intermission, without memory of me.
Did I ever see her face that year? Not in the
stories I tell myself. In dreams, I go back inside,
but I cannot find her. Her door is locked. There
is only a girlchild whispering to the dog. She
pauses, sensing me, but she never turns to look.

This selection comes from the book, We Ran Rapturous, available from The Atlas Review.  Purchase your copy here! Our curator for this selection is Natalie Giarratano.

Shannon Sankey is the author of We Ran Rapturous (The Atlas Review, forthcoming 2019). Her poems have appeared at Poets.org, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, the minnesota review, Puerto del Sol, Sugar House Review, Barrelhouse, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of a 2017 Academy of American Poets Prize and a 2019 SAFTA residency. She holds an MFA from Chatham University, where she was the Whitford Fellow. She is the founder of Stranded Oak Press. www.shannonsankey.com / @shansankey

Natalie Giarratano is the author of Big Thicket Blues (Sundress Publications, 2017) and Leaving Clean, winner of the 2013 Liam Rector First Book Prize in Poetry (Briery Creek Press, 2013). Her poems have appeared in Beltway Poetry, Tupelo Quarterly, Tinderbox, and American Literary Review, among others. She edits and lives in Fort Collins, Colorado, with her partner and daughter and is the city’s poet laureate.