I want to be a victim
of murder-by-mistake–
the bullet intended
for a head honcho or thief,
a drug dealer zig-zagging
across the square when
a trigger gets squeezed
one second too late.
Or the bullet meets me
in a ricochet, a matter
of precise geometry
no marksman can replicate.
Blood blooms like a hollyhock
through my shirt,
and I’m gone before medics
roll me over, bare arms akimbo
and hair strewn and tangled,
left eyetooth chipped.
Just let me get murdered
simply by mistake,
the target escaping due
to a quick pivot,
a scenario more fair
than intention conducted
by a skulking intruder.
And it supersedes a death
due to jealousy,
that melodrama old
as the hills;
more sleek than a snuff
by disease’s slow creep,
or the elongated languish
in some ghostly ward,
hair gossamer fluff,
eyes rheumy-red,
my only raison d’etre
a Pop Tart 3 o’clock.
Don’t want to witness
systems going kaput –
first the twinge, eternal
ache, then atrophy;
evenings waiting in vain
for a great-grandson to call
while a fluke such as this
will bring folks in droves
from Poughkeepsie, Berlin,
Coeur D’Alene, and Seville.
They’ll brag how we shared
a recipe or blue jeans, switch-
backs through the Smokies,
a high school crush.
Parents will forgive every flaw
for which they cursed me;
colleagues wish they’d kept
that book I autographed;
friends regret they never offered
their home on the Atlantic.
Murder me, someone, purely
by mistake.
Even enemies will think
it tragic.
I can’t pretend to know
what you will say to her
this time, the pages of her
cookbook on our shelf
curling in memory of her
fingertips; the foliage
of the ficus in the corner–
a birthday present to her
last year– going even greener
now; the socks she knit
in back hall boots ready
to jump up and pogo
over to her house.
I did not know in our first six
months together that this
would go on during our
marriage, during her
marriage, during all the child-
rearing years; that your mother
would receive greeting cards
and souvenirs from trips
to Wyoming and five-hour visits
from her even after we all
reached retirement, and although
this ex does not call you
from her car or barn loft
or fire escape, I feel the pulse
in wires strung between sycamores.
I hear your mother’s quest for
your uptake on her reports;
a telephone ringing–insistent,
persistent and shrill into our
houses, kitchen after kitchen.
Shoshauna Shy's poems have recently been published by Creative Wisconsin, San Pedro River Review, Cerasus Magazine, and Poetry Breakfast. One of her poems was longlisted for the Fish Publishing Poetry Prize 2022, and in 2023, the poem “Not Wanting to Meet My Birth Mother” was a finalist in the annual contest of Naugatuck River Review. Her poems have been made into video, produced inside taxi cabs, and even decorated the hind quarters of city buses.