Sonya Groves

Published: December 3rd, 2015

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Sonya Groves is an English teacher in San Antonio.   She has poetry publications in over 20 journals, including  The New Verse News, La Noria, The Voices Project, Aries, Carbon Culture Review, and FLARE: The Flagler Review.  Currently she is pursuing her Master’s degree in English at Our Lady of the Lake University.

Primary

An azure sky
and a country maize,

a sapphire robin’s egg
and a Prussian periwinkle,

a French navy,
a royal baby,

and a very very dark boy
all in indigo denim,

a swath of cerulean cobalt
and powder slate encased in electric steel.

Ay me, how I love the English language.

Memory Block

There’s a single moment, 
a nano second in time, 
a flash point, between 
the moment you hover, 
and the moment you land,
when the crash freezes
into frames of memory
partitioned into blocks
like negatives to be 
reprinted and distributed.

Flood

sun on a tin roof submerged,
trails of wet diamonds from eaves,
stucco walls discolored,
edges ebbing to monochrome,

chubby plastic doll leg poking
up from the mud, little girl
painting its toes, clouds shutter
past in fast forward,

a band-aid’s been ripped 
from my skin too soon,
wound open and raw,

the world has left its axis,
outstretched its arms 
to stop the rage. 

American Penance

hot shower

scalds the skin

penance for

a day’s sins/

every

morning it

starts the sin

clock counting

Wake-up Call

​She sits in the cafeteria -
her back straight and proud,

gone the girl, 
there sits the woman.


Four months away, she’s no longer
mine but the world’s. 

She’s like me now. Was I ever 
the guide to this moment

or merely the doorman?
(Better that I am not the mat)

She turns, waves, head titled
the spell gone. She’s still

inside, my little one, perhaps
not ready for the taking.