Pride

I wait in a doorway for wind to die, 
watch a different woman head into the wind, 
rock with it, buffeted by it, 
her backpack is ballast. She leans forward, 
the prow of her own ship. 

The boats are on her feet: 
men’s sneakers. One sole flaps loose. 
Her frayed jacket is roomy enough 
to sleep in. 

With warrior eyes 
she fishes in a trashcan, finds cellophane.  

I’m standing close enough to see 
she’s cut other cellophane into rectangles, 
pinned them to her jacket like medals 

that reveal and protect 
paper sheets of her own writing, 
her body of poems. 

SHELBY ALLEN

Shelby Allen’s work has appeared in English Journal, Sanctuary, Wild Earth, Phoebe, The Brooklyn Review, Tiferet, The MacGuffin, and other journals, plus The New York Times, The Boston Globe, and her book Crack Willow: Poems of Transformation (from Cherry Grove). She has coached poets in prison and in first-grade classrooms.