Sonya Schneider

Sonya Schneider is a Northwest poet and playwright with San Diego roots. She has been a finalist for Atlanta Review’s International Poetry Contest, New Letters Patricia Cleary Miller Award, Raleigh Review’s Laux & Millar Poetry Prize and Writer’s Digest Annual Competition. Her poetry can be found or is forthcoming in Atlanta Review, Catamaran, Mom Egg Review, Moon City Review, Naugatuck River Review, ONE ART, Potomac Review, Raleigh Review, Rust & Moth, SWWIM, Whale Road Review and elsewhere. A graduate of Stanford University and Pacific University’s MFA in Poetry, she lives in Seattle with her family.

Gecko Eggs

The full moon leads us to the Plumeria.
The full moon, and the wine.
My hand grazing your strong shoulders,
your smile lifted by my laughter,
we walk toward the tree’s waxy flowers,
intoxicating as the inside of your arm after sex.

Leaning against its twisted trunk,
I sober myself to our imperfect kissing,
the hard press of wood against my back.
And there, inside a hollow knuckle,
I see them— a clutch of gecko eggs— glowing
tiny planets, premonitions of life to come.
I think of that day, in high school, when I begged
my best friend to ditch class and follow me
down Chatsworth Boulevard because it was raining
and in San Diego, it almost never rained.

I wanted us to remember that feeling of wet sky
in our eyes, the glistening bareness
of our young legs. As we walked, we sang out –
our untrained voices pinging off concrete
sidewalks, each rebellious high note
highlighting the swell of my leathery shell,
its cracks already visible.