essays by shé

bookshelf

Tag: poetry

  • My Book for Sale

    Dance First …ask questions later: poems & paintings by Shé is now available for purchase. The e-book includes more than 100 poems and 70 artworks spanning 45 of my hard-won years. To celebrate, I sang loudly and danced exuberantly along shore. Variations on the theme Hallelujah! rang through my brain throughout the day, including versions by George…

  • Perseverance

    “What’s within you is stronger than what’s in your way.” –Antoinette Lee Toscano via the anthology, Women and Water, edited by Straub, Russell, and Hirst What’s in my way, usually, is self-doubt. I once interviewed a dancer for an article about international perspectives. I came away from it wishing for even a small dose of her…

  • Undeniable

    When I was in third grade, Ms. Robinette sent me up to the fifth grade wing of Will Rogers Elementary to study poetry with the big kids. She recognized my quick and hungry brain, and figured this was one way to divert boredom. I had recently picked out a pair of bright blue wooden clogs…

  • Underwater Realm

    Not only is gravity suspended under water, time seems to be as well. Hoi polloi noises are muffled, and I float through flocks of small fish. Little forests of seaweed waft in the longshore current, and mosaic’d swimmers dart suddenly away when they realize they’ve been spotted. Stingrays leave round depressions in the seabed, and…

  • 2Loved2BUgly

    So, I shaved my head. I look like Steve McQueen. Or a monk. Not a curl in sight. It’s very soft, though, and quite comforting to pet. But Scorn visited quickly. “You are too ugly to be loved,” she said. Fortunately my inner Pollyanna piped up. “No, babe. You are too loved to be ugly,” which made…

  • Poetry Prompter

    An assortment of job titles over the years: mussel farmer, ghostwriter, roving flower seller, guerrilla-art-instigator, body double, phone book deliverer, pâté promoter, attendance goddess, canine physical therapist, living sculpture, Ferrari driver, Instant Poetry Booth operator, Literary Lounge host, neighborhood association president.  But my favorite title by far is Poetry Prompter. Hired by the Washington State…

  • Heard

    Anxiety is finally taking a back seat. Feels like years that she’s been driving me around. But now I have a home — Habibi of the Sea. And time and space to write. A publisher contacted me recently. She’s interested in Letters to Lulu, the epistolary novella I penned in 2013, the same year I evacuated…