For All Mankind
I assemble shrines
to the porous
limestone; corpse of seasponge
sundried, scentless; bone
rigid around tunnels;
ceramics, unglazed—women
leak, that is our nature
I, myself, still feel the tug
of milk, pulling itself through
my left breast when the cry
of a child catches me
accidentally on a newsfeed
weeping the fat of
my own body
begging, begging
to serve
in ways a heart
cannot beat for
more than one
selfish person
Shana Ross is a recent transplant to Edmonton, Alberta and Treaty Six Territory. Qui transtulit sustinet. Her work has recently appeared in CutBank, Identity Theory, Ilanot Review, Gigantic Sequins and more. She is the winner of the 2022 Anne C. Barnhill prize and the 2021 Bacopa Literary Review Poetry competition, as well as a 2019 Parent-Writer Fellowship to Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing. She serves as an editor for Luna Station Quarterly and a critic for Pencilhouse.
