NAYELLY BARRIOSOn Holding Shadows Hostage
you have been fighting off lions all afternoon say you have locked them in the room we hang fruit to dry and all you want now is your shadow which I keep under my bed next to a bach trumpet nightly your shadow types up letters the dingswipe&keys keep me up wishing I did not keep that old typewriter had never stashed that shadow there I say your shadow has gone stale you’ll have to remold & reattach it like peter pan? you ask with soap? but we both know that didn’t work you go into your backyard studio sponge & bucket knife in hand grind shards of glass old scraps of clay after some days you emerge a ten ft shadow by your side like a brush on a palette silent still I’ll grow into it every dusk I see you fishing with your shadow ponds and lakes no longer enough your sink line curves toward the sky like an elephant’s trunk hooked on to nothing yet 102 The Paris-American 
Nayelly Barrios is a Rio Grande Valley native. Her work has appeared in Beloit Poetry Journal, Puerto del Sol, and DIAGRAM. She has been featured as the LoWriter of the Week on Poet Juan Felipe Herrera's website and is a recent participant of the Squaw Valley Community of Writers. She is a founding editor of Ostrich Review.
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Next week's poet:
Tory Adkisson 
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