A Life Blown to Pieces
By Shontay Luna
Someone, whom one wouldn’t normally suspect,
said online “This is not my America.” To which
all I can do is say, “Welcome.” Welcome to what
they’re receiving is just a small sample of what
people of color go through, in this america,
every single day.
It never was my “america,” but just the place where
I was born. No matter where I lived - Bronzeville,
Chatham, Lakeview, Englewood. It still wasn’t
home; because those places are in america. Flash
forward - to the rancid, primitive ugliness that is
now. It’s like america crushed the mirror she was
lovingly gazing into. Because, if she looked long
enough, she’d find her own grotesqueness behind
the glass. She now finds herself in a corner that
she’s trying to blast her way out of; in gunshot
rounds of three. Woefully oblivious to others
looking on while calling her out on her shit. And
so I say again that is this not my america, just my
country of birth and where I reside. But I’d gladly
take a sliver of what she once was, to bury what
she is now.
Shontay Luna is a self-proclaimed goddess that lives in the Midwest with mix of pens, paper and Sons of Anarchy’s Juan Carlos “Juice” Ortiz fanfiction fantasies. A part-time public service worker by day, her poems have appeared in WestWard Quarterly, The Listening Eye, Text Power Telling, Umbrella Factory Magazine, Canyon Voices, Toasted Cheese, The Beatnik Cowboy and The Insurgence, among others. The author of four chapbooks of poetry, ‘The Goddess Journal’ is themed with puzzles and affirmations to elevate feminine self-esteem. Another is ‘To James & Sarah with Love’ - a Silent Generation slang memorial to her paternal grandparents.