Spring 1999, Volume 16.3
Poetry
Yvette A. Schnoeker-Shorb
Yvette A. Schnoeker-Shorb (B.A., Sonoma State University) has published in Green Hills Literary Lantern, New Thought Journal, Slant, Puerto del Sol, Sulphur River Literary Review, Eureka Literary Magazine, Blueline, and many others. She is also co-publisher of Native West Press, which recently brought out the anthology, Least Loved Beasts of the Really Wild West: A Tribute (July 1997).
First Person Present Tension
I'm not who I seem,
never was.
So many people form
the light in which I find
my fractured image;
I become face after face,
fall into place after place,
each glow a spotlight
for a piece of the whole,
turning toward anyone
who reflects what I was
or projects
how I long to be.
Blessed Structures
Trees are blessed structures,
but I could never stand
to be surrounded; trees of knowledge,
thoughts, ideas, theories,
those tall, stiff constructs,
once confined me to the forest.
I now walk free, unshadowed desert,
unabstracted flatland.
Above
raven flap raven flap raven
tilts her cocky head,
beak pointing downward, eye on me.
Don't look down on me, Sister.
I'm winging it out here, too,
and there is not a tree in sight
upon which to land.