Sharon Venezio
Sharon Venezio received an MA in creative writing from San Francisco State University. She is co-director of the Valley Contemporary Poets and the recipient of the Mark Linenthal Award for her poem “Meanwhile.” Her book, The Silence of Doorways, was released by Moon Tide Press in March 2013. Her poems have appeared in Bellevue Literary Review, Two Hawks Quarterly, Transfer, and numerous other journals. She lives in Los Angeles.


Family Album

Here a cigarette dangles between her thin fingers;
she sleeps through conversation and ash.
Here she closes her eyes and the sea stops moving.

And here she is a boneyard of unspoken words,
salt in the quiet throat of her marriage.
Here she is the green whiff of childhood.

Here she is sparrowed at the edge of the earth,
exiled in her dying skin. Here, like sorrow,
she is liquid in the bones.

And here is the day she will be gone, her eyes resting
no longer upon the tulips, their white
petals, like teeth, fall to the ground.

Here she is hair, and nail, and noise in the brain.
And here, dear body, be still. Time is the only lover
that will touch her now.


originally published in Ghost Town 


© 2013 Sharon Venezio
Sharon Venezio was a Featured Poet who read her poetry at the July 2013 Second Sunday Poetry Series