The Forest She Traveled

By Shayna S. Israel

The Forest She Traveled is a collection of poems, a journey through the bodys grammar as it seeks to bring forward what has passed. The book is a vast field note of conversations with the fallen, the ancestral child, the ransacked, the witness. It is an account of a young woman and the precariousness she finds at the intersection of identity and migration. It is an archivists project tinged with antediluvian fantasy and hard living. In the authors blue jeep, turned boat, turned spaceship, she arrives at a pit stop to leave a memento.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: May 24, 2018
• ISBN: 9781984511614

Shayna S. Israel

Shayna S. Israel is a poet, educator and scholar. She is an alumna of Bryn Mawr College, the University of Pennsylvania and the University at Buffalo. Born to a Belizean mother and southern Black father on the planet of Brooklyn, she lives between worlds.

Book preview

Shayna Israel’s The Forest She Traveled reads like a tome of lessons. Mind, they read neither as moralistic fables, nor as aphorisms served in a spoon; rather as vivid narratives that challenge and engage.

Pulling from Israel’s personal, familial, and cultural past, her prose manages to maintain a playfulness and wit, even through the more difficult to read content. Exploring race, childhood, womanhood, and family, Israel calls readers’ attention through wordplay, tangible images, and experimental forms. Contrasting powerful themes and dynamic devices with witty and, at times, funny word play, Israel forces the reader to interact with the text and ask whether these lessons are for them or have they just been for Israel all along.

This is the underbelly of The Forest She Traveled. The content of this collection is rich, with unforgiving strength packed behind every letter, however, what makes it (and I do not say this lightly) truly inspiring is the vulnerability Israel manages to show and pull out of the audience.

The poems in this book, collected and written over nine years, will seize you, spit you out, and keep moving, leaving you grateful and wanting more.

—Mistral Celeste Khan-Becerra, CWP Collective Press

The Forest She Traveled

Shayna S. Israel

Copyright © 2018 by Shayna Israel.

Library of Congress Control Number:            2018905719

ISBN:                  Hardcover                                   978-1-9845-1159-1

                           Softcover                                     978-1-9845-1160-7

                           eBook                                           978-1-9845-1161-4

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Twitter: @shaynasisrael

Facebook: @shaynasisrael

Instagram: @shaynasisrael

For inquiries, contact: [e-mail]

Xlibris

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

543628

Contents

Acknowledgements

Dedicated to

Journey to Here Blog Post

I-476

Forge

Bandits

Obsidian

Lord Villain, Inspect My Colors

Anti-Hero Sonnet

The Forest She Traveled

Third Rail Movie Screens

Bury the Blank

Max’s Birthday Week: Tuesday

ROUTE 1

Fourth of July

Clouds Passing

Trip to Hayden Planetarium

Toilet Paper

Morning Caravan

A Not So Subtle Subtlety

Cinnamon with My Banana This Morning

Hanger

Eastern Parkway

For Jessie Helms

On Main and Lafayette

Where, at Whom, to Look?

Visions

Squawking Cage Swing

Is

Surviving Is No Small Feat

ROUTE 33

Plush

For Santigold

Night Swells

Interlope

106 Blue Wintry Dawn

LAMAR AVE

Kabuki Theater

Flyin’ before Dawn

From Solids to Broth

Wizard

Max’s Birthday Week: Monday

Slurping Sound of Trees

Shaman’s Calabash Artifact

Late Hour

I Have Given Up Much

Yucatan-Thick

INTERSTATE 95

Directions

Sisters

Incessant Life: Luna Arcade

Weigh Yourself on the Moon

Dungeon Monument

Blue Hour Werewolf

Acknowledgements

Giving honor to those who have helped me gather these moments, memories and monuments. I here could not name them all, yet, I wanted to give special recognition and thanks to: My family, Donna & Billy Israel, Matthew, Billy Jr., Elizabeth, my nieces; my life partner Michael A. Miller; my mentors and guides.

Dedicated to

the gone-befores and those yet to come

Journey to Here Blog Post

(April 12th, 2018)

It takes