Shei Sanchez

Shei Sanchez is a writer, photographer, and teacher from Jersey City, New Jersey. Her poetry can be found in journals and anthologies, including Still: The Journal, One by Jacar Press, The Braided Way, Women of Appalachia’s Women Speak Volumes 7 and 8, and Nonwhite and Woman: 131 Micro Essays of Being in the World. A Best of the Net nominee, Shei is working on her first poetry collection. On weekends, she can be found herding her goats in the woods and meadows outside of Athens, Ohio. She lives with her partner on their farm and their colorful family of animals.

The Before and After

after the painting River of Light by Vicki McCafferty

This moment’s full and wanting.

Rhapsody at last light dancing
in pink fandango on knife’s edge.

Thick honey, caramel, cornflower
on silken water. Bottled memory

unbidden on a brush. An hourglass
toppled beside desire. Why do we want

to arrest time? Pour the short end
of light in a measuring cup and watch

wet sand spill on a canvas. Drip honey
on the mouth of a harbor and wait,

just wait. How do we catch the sound
of a river bending? I want to catch

a shine of light before it names
everything: the Hocking, the Scioto,

the Maumee, the Chagrin. I want to sail
the crest of youth before water

names its thirst: the Alabang, the Hudson,
the Charles, the Chao Praya.

“Eat this,” the woman from Isaan
said in Thai and handed me sour soup

with young pork bones. I smell lemongrass,
galangal, makrut and taste the color

of longing. I see the radiance
of Wat Arun against a rose-tinted

dawn and sense the moment fading.
My fumbles and regrets savored

with gratitude. I want to wade in the before
and after. I want to wake astream from a sky

of currant, coral, dandelion. I want. . .