Shawn Aveningo Sanders

Shawn Aveningo Sanders Poems

Shawn Aveningo Sanders Biography

Shawn Aveningo Sanders is a globally published, award-winning poet who can’t stand the taste of coconut, eats pistachios daily and loves shoes … especially red ones! (redshoepoet.com) Shawn’s work has appeared in over 100 literary journals and anthologies. She’s a Pushcart nominee (2015) , Best of the Net nominee (2017) , co-founder of The Poetry Box®, managing editor for The Poeming Pigeon®, and was named Best Female Poet-Performer in Sacramento News & Review Reader Poll (2009) . Shawn grew up in the suburbs of St. Louis, Missouri and earned her bachelors degree in Computer Science and Marketing, graduating Summa cum Laude from the University of Maryland while living overseas in Stuttgart, Germany. She's also lived in Alabama, Georgia, Virginia, Indiana, California and Oregon. Shawn is a proud mother of three and shares the creative life with her husband in the suburbs of Portland, Oregon, where she writes poetry, publishes books, hosts readings and designs websites for local businesses and authors. She believes poetry, especially when read aloud, is the perfect literary art form for today’s fast-paced world due to its power to stir emotion in less than two minutes.)

The Best Poem Of Shawn Aveningo Sanders

Pink Ribbons

One lump or two?
Ma'am….your coffee?
One lump or two?
Such an innocent question
uttered hundreds of times
in tea rooms, coffee houses,
restaurants, airplanes.

Today, those words
had the power
to bring her to her knees.
No amount of chamomile
or honey capable
of soothing her pain.
She was drowning
in a sea of sorrow,
fearful of what
tomorrow would bring.

How could she face
this new reflection,
scarred, disfigured?
What would she see
reflecting in his eyes?
He said he would always
love her, no matter what.
He said she would always
be beautiful to him,
but this....this
isn't what crosses your
mind, vowing in
sickness and health.

Each day she'll carry on,
with a stiff upper lip
and pink ribbons in her hair,
stuffing the prosthetic
into her bra, no longer
adorned with sheer lace.

She'll march with an
army of women.

She's grateful to be
among the living,
a survivor as she's
now known.But she misses
her curves, even if sometimes
they sagged.She misses
the tingling of her nipples
when her husband held
her in his arms.She
misses feeling like a woman.
She misses feeling
whole.

Ma'am?
One lump or two?
She replied,
Oh, No Thank You.
No lumps for me.

{First published in Wait a Minute, I Have to Take Off My Bra! by Inkspotter Publishing, Canada 2011}

Shawn Aveningo Sanders Comments