(PROSE POEMS)
CATHRYN SHEA
CATHRYN SHEA
SOMETIMES A SHADOW
Sometimes I’m an Apache chief staring straight ahead because I can’t make my hair curl and I’m frustrated and my sister calls me Cochise. I have high cheekbones and raven-black hair knife-parted in the middle, blunt-cut at the shoulders. Sometimes I’m Audrey Hepburn in a nun’s habit. Then I’m Audrey Hepburn’s reflection in a store window, lips parted in a thin smile because she knows she’ll always fit in the little black dress.
Sometimes I’m my father, teeth crooked the way I loved, with the cleft chin I wished I had and I’m casting a line over Flume creek forever reeling in native trout and releasing them. I snap out of it when I apply burgundy lipstick, smooth my hair, put on dangly earrings. And in the mirror I glimpse my mother standing with me as if she were not eternally forty.
ESCAPE TO CANADA
The Okanagan saved me. The summer after graduating and I was panicked having no clue how I was going to support myself, get a job other than barmaid or barista.
Kamloops saved me. Fishing for fat pink char from an aluminum boat, canoeing on the green lakes, sleeping in the dark of a log cabin with no electricity.
Nanaimo Bay saved me. Shucking beach oysters, eating them raw, getting up at the crack of dawn to amaze myself with pileated woodpeckers.
No-see-ums and stinging nettles saved me. Made me forget my supposed plight, distracted me from the feeling of doom. I could drift, daydream, stay calm even in the thick summer heat.
And I believed I could go back.
The Okanagan saved me. The summer after graduating and I was panicked having no clue how I was going to support myself, get a job other than barmaid or barista.
Kamloops saved me. Fishing for fat pink char from an aluminum boat, canoeing on the green lakes, sleeping in the dark of a log cabin with no electricity.
Nanaimo Bay saved me. Shucking beach oysters, eating them raw, getting up at the crack of dawn to amaze myself with pileated woodpeckers.
No-see-ums and stinging nettles saved me. Made me forget my supposed plight, distracted me from the feeling of doom. I could drift, daydream, stay calm even in the thick summer heat.
And I believed I could go back.
Cathryn said this about her poems: ("Sometimes a Shadow") "Especially when I was young, I identified with warriors and heroines, no matter what their gender. I intensely loved my parents and the physical attributes that embodied them. It felt like whomever I idolized was (and is) a deep part of me. My mother left this world too early." ("Escape to Canada") "After leaving the safety of college, what to do with my life in bad economic times and world chaos? The end line is reminiscent of Thomas Wolfe’s 'you can’t go back home … back home to the escapes of Time and Memory.' Even though Canada was not home for me, but an exotic, idealized place."
Cathryn Shea is the author of four poetry collections, most recently the micro chapbook “My Heart is a Salt Mirror Like Salar de Uyuni” (Rinky Dink Press, 2018) and “It’s Raining Lullabies” (Dancing Girl Press, 2017). “The Secrets Hidden in a Pear Tree” is forthcoming from Dancing Girl Press in 2019. Her poetry has been nominated for Sundress Publication’s Best of the Net 2017 and recently appears in Tar River Poetry, Gargoyle, Permafrost, Rust + Moth, Tinderbox, and elsewhere. See www.cathrynshea.com and @cathy_shea on Twitter.
Cathryn Shea is the author of four poetry collections, most recently the micro chapbook “My Heart is a Salt Mirror Like Salar de Uyuni” (Rinky Dink Press, 2018) and “It’s Raining Lullabies” (Dancing Girl Press, 2017). “The Secrets Hidden in a Pear Tree” is forthcoming from Dancing Girl Press in 2019. Her poetry has been nominated for Sundress Publication’s Best of the Net 2017 and recently appears in Tar River Poetry, Gargoyle, Permafrost, Rust + Moth, Tinderbox, and elsewhere. See www.cathrynshea.com and @cathy_shea on Twitter.
