Photo: “Zenos Colman Public School” by artistmac is licensed under CC BY 2.0
I have tried and failed many times to
say how that building of amber stones
has made me feel. Even after forty years
since I’ve walked among the beige walls
and mahogany columns. The structure now
breezes by me as I’m always in the car, on
my way to someplace that’s not THERE.
The lessons it gave I didn’t learn from the
textbooks or teachers, but in being the re-
luctant receiver of daily torment. The school
bell ringing like a wounded animal taking its
last breaths. The building still stands, now as
a CPS regional office. The bell, I can hear it,
still. The only place of my past that I hold
absolutely no nostalgia for. The Plaster of
Paris covering the holes in the wall but not
the ones in my soul.
Shontay Luna majored in Poetry at Columbia College Chicago before finishing elsewhere. Her poems have appeared in Olney Magazine, Bullshit Literary Magazine, EKL Review and The Crucible among others. Her most recent book title is The Goddess Journal – a tool for unlocking the Goddess within every Woman. When not writing, she’s thrifting or gleefully hoarding pens and lives in the Midwest with her ‘Sons of Anarchy’ Juan Carlos “Juice” Ortiz photo gallery.