Bio
Raised in Georgia, Julianza (Julie) Shavin is a writer and visual artist who adopted the Rocky Mountains as home in 1993. Pikes Peak Arts Council has conferred upon her its annual Performance Poet and Page Poet awards; she also has many honors through The National Federation of State Poetry Societies. Her fifth book, “Closet Optimist’s Creed,” is scheduled for Summer 2017. She serves as President of Poetry West (www.poetrywest.net).
Trigger Warning
Dog and I at the park
to escape the human.
Trees, pond, livestock
have nothing to say, as in, long ago,
I sat by a stream, needy, and
left wanting.
Most guilty of things is this: water,
with its babble default, constant change,
seeming promise.
At the park, I got so little of what I loved,
or thought to love.
And then the return: humans
in their shells on the stalled road,
on parched and littered sidewalks,
in blight of doorways, teeming
and that sensation, as on a long drive at night,
nothing familiar, ghosts of trees sighing,
blackness a hand-pitch, body barreled
into an eternity of no thing reaching,
until, finally, some outpost, even boarded,
some guarded and shameful secret,
or fast-food joint
looms our relief.
How
one abandons trees and bellicose clouds,
stars and starshine
to their endurances, solitary each to each and beyond,
staid, ungiving, as
Pathetic.
We lust back.