Bodysong
Before my mother’s death, my heart and mind lived five states away / and when she died they lived three states away, and when / I left my marriage, they moved in together / living in different rooms, but close enough for one to hear / the other crying or dancing to music / that moves through the house like a soundtrack / – not the original heartbeat, but a remix / think the beat of one song / behind the lyrics to another. // My mother’s death revealed my mother’s song / a death that could be mine if I choose to inherit it / lament with little groove / life I couldn’t have because I refused to take it.
*
My Heaven
I know you said I’d see you as a black cat with yellow ribbon, but I saw you
as a marigold
next to an open field that looked to me like heaven. You were off to the side, away
from the crowd
of wildflowers and grassy hills. You were, as you were in life, doing your own thing. I know
my heaven looks nothing
like yours. You prefer tall buildings and busy streets. You want to travel in slink and shadow
like an alley cat
unbothered and unattached, but today you came rooted as a small flower with yellow leaves
sparse – just enough.
*
Farewell to All the Hypothetical Lives I Refuse to Have
Mississippi girl on horseback, good
gumbo. New Yorker, trendsetter. Midwestern
mom with the warm home. Farewell to that life, and the next,
and the next, like water that makes
the river I frequent. Goodbye turtles,
sunbathing on rocks and heavy, broken branches.
Shiny silver dollars. Farewell
to the only child, the background singer,
the lonely wife – whose only touch she feels
is from the steady linger of the fading summer sun.
*
Shonté Daniels is a poet and game developer in Maryland. Her poetry has appeared in several publications, including Puerto del sol, Ambit, Baltimore Review, and elsewhere. Her essays on gaming has been published in Vice Gaming, Kotaku, Deorbital, and others.
