3 Poems by Shontay Luna

For Coco

I see you,
the fear that
holds you
in a suffocating
caress as glimpses
of your former
world shatter.
They fall,
helplessly into
countless pieces
that glitter into
daylight. Making
the sight of them
even more painful.

A Conversation Between Celi and Sheriff Roosevelt

(“Celi” is an original female character.)

His words were not as a cop.
Once running, they couldn’t stop.
Running through the air like herds.
Were not as a cop, his words.

He was baffled, couldn’t understand why.
For all the money on Earth and clouds in the sky.
Logic remained, dormant and addled.
Couldn’t understand why…. he was baffled.

He saw the Sista who had left her kind,
leaving unity behind.
For love of a different mister.
Who had left her kind, he saw the Sista.

She could do better, he said.
Hoping the words would stay in her head.
Like a weighted, truthful letter.
He said she could do better.

A biker and a criminal.
Whose jail time was more than minimal.
Instead of someone like her,
a criminal and a biker.

She looked at him, in the eye.
Her feelings for Juan Carlos anything but shy.
Any respect she had for this person going grim.
In the eye, she looked at him.

“I love this biker, from the bolts to the boots;
love the outlaw and all the bullets he shoots.”
“He’s a leather-wearing, chrome-riding striker.
From the bolts to the boots, I love that biker.”

Close Your Eyes

A Villanelle Poem about Celi (an original female character) and Juice at S3 Ep12 right before SAMCRO gets hauled off to jail. Celi’s words to her Old Man to get both through it.

I am with you, Papi. Close your eyes.
Prison walls be damned to their cores.
Our spirits intertwined as one.

Take no heed of lies,
of unfaithfulness. I am & will always be yours.
I am with you, Papi. Close your eyes.

My love for you, a lustrous prize
most profound. Gleefully dancing on crystal shores.
Our spirits intertwined as one.

Taste my skin as you make it rise
to the yearning of your will that roars.
I am with you, Papi. Close your eyes.

Catching my breath in surprise
at the depths you find past my doors.
Our spirits intertwined as one.

Anyone who hears shall envy the highs
and lows that helplessly escape me; as the cumming soars.
I am with you, Papi. Close your eyes.
Our spirits intertwined as one.

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Shontay Luna is a lifelong Chicagoan with work published in, most recently, The Daily Drunk and Rigorous and Anti-Heroine Chic. She’s the author of two chapbooks, Reflections of a Project Girl and Recollections & Dreams. She recently finished her third book of poetry ‘To James & Sarah with Love: Poetry based on slang from the 1920’s through 1940s’.