The Artist Takes Down Her Show in Which Not a Single Painting Sold by Shoshauna Shy

and pauses between hauling canvases
across the rough floorboards to watch
from the doorway as a bus brakes
at the curb outside, exhales and lowers
itself to discharge a passenger.
Wordlessly, a young woman in cut-offs
and sandals, handbag swinging, leaps
from the vehicle and strides away.
The bus lifts itself back into position
like an elephant coming out of a kneel,
lumbering on to do this thankless job
at the next stop, and the next.



Shoshauna Shy's poems have been made into videos, produced inside taxi cabs, and even decorated the hind quarters of city buses. Not a monogamous writer, she works on 7-11 pieces at the same time. She is also a flash fiction author— but that's another story!