My
Woman
Shannon
Prince
I
have a woman
Burns like fire
Mouth full of knives
Fists like iron
Each night she tells me
With eyes hard as stone
“You’re gonna miss me when I’m gone”
She
tells me lies
Her voice screeches higher
Stays out all night
Comes home mornings tired
She’s a twisted tune
Like an old blues song
But she says I’ll miss it when it’s gone
She says “I know I may be
A tough row to hoe
But you cannot fathom
How deep my love goes”
Nasty old woman
But she says, “Before long
I’ll take my witch ways
But your grief is your own
And you’re gonna miss me when I’m gone”
***
Shannon
Prince is a creative writing major at Dartmouth College. In
addition to writing, she is an activist for indigenous and African
issues, a ceramics maker, and a travel addict. Her favorite activity
is dancing the salsa with the elderly people she serves at a local
Salvation Army community center. She writes poetry, creative nonfiction,
and fiction that covers everything from nature and love poems,
retellings of fairy tales, and the oral histories of marginalized
peoples. She has been published in Frodo's Notebook, Falcon
Wings, KUHF magazine, Imprint, and Rice University's
Writers in the Schools Magazine.
©
Shannon Prince