Poetry by Shannon Wolf

               ​​Tristan Loper CC



Unconditional
for Lilly Marie 

I haven’t been writing much lately. My body keeps the score, as they say,
of all the ways and days I’m failing. I have it all, you see and so I spend
my time, like money: in abundance. Watching time ebb away, watching
the leaves on the trees change from ever-ever-green to hot-to-the-touch red.
And I try to muster up the feeling in my legs to walk a straight line
from my car door to the classroom or to the grocery line. Wrists quaking
under the weight of my unfinished lists. I see myself from outside my skin:
canceling dinner plans, watching my legs splay on the sofa, ignoring my phone
because I don’t have a smile left in a pocket somewhere to pull out and put on.
It is strange that every day can be a happiness, yet there is still a seed in my brain,
begging for water, ready to burst. I hate nature poems. I like poems that feel
like a person, that feel like a fight. I like to picture two lungs squeezing
and releasing like the day was too damn hard. Of course, it is easy to write this,
now, when I am escaping the mist, when I am pulling free, knowing quietly
I will return. It is just easier to be crazy, now I know that love will never leave. 




Shannon Wolf is a British writer and teacher, living in Denver, Colorado. Her debut full-length poetry collection Green Card Girl is forthcoming from Fernwood Press. She received a joint MA-MFA in Poetry at McNeese State University and also has degrees from Lancaster University and the University of Chichester. She is the Co-Curator of the Poets in Pajamas Reading Series. Her poetry, short fiction, and non-fiction (which can also be found under the name Shannon Bushby) have appeared in The Forge, No Contact Mag, and HAD among others. You can find her on social media @helloshanwolf.
​