EMERGING FEMINISMS, Two Poems: “Flowers, I Thought” and “She Stirs the Night”

By Shelby Lynn Lanaro

“Flowers, I thought”

would brighten up the room,
so a pot of yellow daisies sits
on the window sill leaning
to the left, sometimes the right.
Each day is different.

And each day I move the pot
turning it until the daisies lean
in toward the kitchen.
Until yesterday

when I realized the daisies
don’t turn left or right.

They turn to the sun
knowing they don’t belong
indoors.
They try to escape
the confines of my kitchen,
perhaps hoping

I’ll do the same.

*****

“She Stirs the Night”

She doesn’t stir with wooden spoon
in her hand, a pot of soup on the stove,
batches of cookies for bake sales;

she stirs midnight blues, braids
strands of fading sun
into darkness of the coming
night. She shines

red, and glides
through dim lit streets,
no destination,
while her family is at home,
and she dreams

as she scrubs herself clean
of wife, mother,
faceless apparition
before she must return to her home,
return to anywhere.

Shelby Lynn Lanaro is a graduate student in the MFA program at Southern Connecticut State University, where she received her Bachelor of Arts Degree in English Literature in 2014. Currently, Shelby is completing her thesis, which is a manuscript of her poems that focuses on various types of relationships. Shelby’s goal is to aid those who do not, or cannot, put voice to their struggles by creating strong voices in her poems.