Golden Shovel for Carl Sandburg, a poem by Shontay Luna

Golden Shovel

for Carl Sandburg

Greed resembling the hue of a hog,

bright in rosiness, plump for the butcher.

And his calculated slaughter. For

reams of notes the

slips spinning out of world

travelled boxes made with tool

by a secret maker.

While the stacker

folds slips of

names in wheat

colored ink. The player

emboldened with

the greenest running lies down railroads

of half-truths and

ambiguities. The 

words seeping into nation’s 

psyche. Weary of the freight

of life. Eager for a new handler,

but stormy

is the path. Husky

are the lies, brawling

in the piss-filled city

streets. Corruption now of 

several generations. The

machine grinding on big

gears, constantly oiled with cracked hands and weary shoulders.

Shontay Luna majored in Poetry at Columbia College, Chicago. Her poems have appeared in Olney Magazine, Umbrella Factory Magazine, EKL Review and The Crucible and elsewhere. Her most recent book is The Goddess Journal: A Tool For Unlocking The Goddess Within Every Woman. When she is not writing, she is couponing or gleefully hoarding pens and notebooks.