In honor of Women’s History Month, read this selection of poems by Sage Ravenwood, Gabriela Bittencourt dos Santos, Kuhu Joshi, Tianna Bratcher, Ari B. Cofer, and Dorsey Craft. These poems were published in Shō No. 4, Shō No. 5, and Shō No. 6.
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“Deer Woman” by Sage Ravenwood
Deer Woman (Ani Yunwitsandsdi)
Before I was born my mother dreamed
of a fawn alone in a woodland glade.
I want to know if there was a woman
ravaged nearby birthing Ani Yunwitsandsdi.
Was I Deer Woman, born without hooves?
So ugly the Yunwi Tsunsdi’ little people left me
Half buried instead of dragging me below.
A small stone they kicked out of boredom.
I wanted to be her, beautiful and enticing.
A man thought child me was. He wasn’t lovesick
enough to be savagely stomped or I wasn’t
strong enough. Where were you Deer Woman?
Wicked enough to lure men only to be
hollowed out in the back of cars, back-alley bars,
in my bed nightly. Each stealing pieces of a myth.
Hunters butchering prey for sport.
Dancing with cloven hooves scuffing
wooden floors with outrage. Medusa arms
slithering toward the ceiling, the band’s
virtuoso channeling Ani Yunwitsandsdi.
Look down at my feet break the spell.
Glue your eyes to my chest so you won’t
see my mouth devouring a scream.
Cinderella’s lost shoe wasn’t a deer hoof.
Deer Woman swaying to a drumbeat
I no longer hear. Silent waves
crashing against skin, my anger
storm brewed over a lake. Tell me
more about the angry native. The deer
always show up, they’re always watching.
Little girl with nubs in her forehead
sprouting antlers. The stories couldn’t
save her. She became the deer.
“Deer Woman” appeared in Shō No. 4.
Sage Ravenwood is a deaf Cherokee woman residing in upstate New York. She is an outspoken advocate against animal cruelty and domestic violence. Her work can be found in Verse Daily, The Temz Review, Contrary, The Rumpus, Massachusetts Review, ANMLY, Jelly Bucket, Colorado Review, 128 Lit, and more. Her first full-length collection, Everything That Hurt Us Becomes a Ghost (Gallaudet University Press, Fall 2023) explores the lingering, resurgent trauma of familial violence and the machinations of colonialism.
“Labor Pains” by Gabriela Bittencourt dos Santos
Labor Pains
I’ve been marred by roiling waters,
waters with ire, waters with bravado, waters sent
by the trapped woman in the yellow-wallpaper corridor
of my mind. Was she angry at me for scrapping my therapist’s advice,
quitting my medication, binge-watching serial killer documentaries,
for attempting to save my credit score by axing my dream?
Whichever it was, she was angry and I could no longer carry myself.
It was 5 o’clock in the evening when I sank into my bed,
beneath the windowsill, in the fetal position,
with everything flushing, failing, fading; the atheist caught
praying to re-enter my mother’s womb,
where birthing is not my job but hers.
All I had to do was flow, down the canal,
toward the light.
About this poem: “Labor Pains” was born from the throes of finding myself in the theater of the world. Through this poem, I realized that to truly “become”—by which I mean to be the most authentic version of yourself, despite all the names you’ve ever been called or given, the blessings and the curses—you must give birth to yourself.
“Labor Pains” appeared in Shō No. 4.
Gabriela Bittencourt dos Santos is a writer, poet, and daughter of Brazilian immigrants. Her poems have appeared in Shō Poetry Journal, The Platform Review, and The Acentos Review. In 2023, she was the award recipient of the NYSSWI Poetry Scholarship. She is the founder of Gabriela the Overthinker, a Substack publication about big thoughts, feelings, and honest conversations. Connect with her on IG @bittencourt__gabriela.
“Saraswati claims creation” by Kuhu Joshi
Saraswati claims creation
Look – I undo the body
you made for me.
Over and over, I practice –
bite my lower lip hard
till it swells into a fist.
Then stain it with lipstick. I reverse
all habits. The age my mother was
when she married, I marry
only poetry, sing
only song in the acid
bar downtown where men
tilt their beards
and sweep their car keys.
And you think Brahma
you made me?
I memorized your world
like every father’s
daughter who wanted
to please him for years. I slashed
my tongue at your doorstep
as offering. I grew a new one
in the morning.
Kuhu Joshi is an Indian poet and professor based in New York City. Her debut poetry collection is titled My Body Didn’t Come Before Me (Speaking Tiger, 2023). Her work has been published in POETRY, Best New Poets, Four Way Review, Rattle, SWWIM, and has received support from the Academy of American Poets, Napa Valley Writers’ Conference, Teaching Artist Project, and Vermont Studio Center. Read more about her and her work at kuhujoshi.com.
“Saraswati claims creation” appeared in Shō No. 5.
“Misoprostol Warning Label” by Tianna Bratcher
Click here to read “Misoprostol Warning Label” as a PDF
About this poem: When crafting this poem, I wrote out all the things that influence my decisions around mothering. Once everything was on the page, I realized I needed a container for it and found a warning label format to be most useful to express how much consideration has gone into these decisions for me.
“Misoprostol Warning Label” appeared in Shō No. 6
Tianna Bratcher (they/she) is a Black, queer, genderfluid poet. Their work has been published in or is forthcoming in Poetry Magazine, Muzzle Magazine, Shade Literary Arts, Stellium Lit Magazine, Ink Well, December Magazine, and elsewhere. Tianna is an alum of Randolph College’s MFA in Creative Writing program. They are a big sister who is infatuated with vampire media, the lives of trees, and collage-making.
“Depression/Uterus” by Ari B. Cofer
Depression/Uterus
i feel it more now that it’s gone. that empty
belly ache. in the hospital, i couldn’t stand to look at
myself, so sick and so scarred. would it be so bad
to welcome an executioner back into my body? i would
rather feel pain than absence. months into recovery
on my bathroom floor, i recounted the number of oxys i had
left before shaking its opiate rattle in my hand
like a pair of dice. i replaced them
in their hiding spot in my medicine cabinet. if only i were so lucky
to need relief. i have it,
now. it does not feel like mercy
Click here to read “Depression/Uterus” as a PDF
About this poem: For the first half of my life, I struggled greatly with mental health, and just as I began to make progress in my recovery from depression, I started to experience severe chronic pain due to endometriosis, adenomyosis, and fibroids. After my hysterectomy, I felt relief from the physical pain, but was inspired to write this poem because of the similarities I noticed between my mental health and physical health recovery.
“Depression/Uterus” appeared in Shō No. 6
“After the Hysterectomy” by Ari B. Cofer
Click here to read “After the Hysterectomy” as a PDF
About this poem: A little over ten years ago, I decided not to have children because of my ongoing struggle with depression and suicidality. So, before my hysterectomy at the end of 2024, I thought my recovery would center around the pain that comes with surgery. Instead, I encountered unexpected grief over the fact that I could no longer carry children, along with anger toward my body for everything that led to this outcome.
“After the Hysterectomy” appeared in Shō No. 6
Ari B. Cofer (she/they) is a poet, writer, and author of paper girl and the knives
that made her and unfold: poetry and prose (Central Avenue Publishing). ari’s
work has been featured on sites such as Buzzfeed and TheMighty. Her writing
focuses on mental health advocacy, her experiences as a queer, Black woman, and love. She, her husband, and their two pets live in the Pacific Northwest.
“Rejected Persona: Yoga Mom” by Dorsey Craft
Rejected Persona: Yoga Mom
At twenty, I used my body for animal prayer:
cat, cow, dog, pigeon, sweat pearling, hidden
in thickets of women, low and alone.
At twenty-six, I lived in a humid poem town
and a man made ghosts of women and girls
whose bodies stretched, their fingers reaching
for joy that had nothing to do with him.
This weekend, bags of sand and anti-Semitic
propaganda wet and lumped in every driveway.
I collected a cul de sac of hatred in a box,
phoned the police, lucky for my privilege
of dialing without fear. I have friends
who are against knowing. I have friends who
make their sons camouflage cakes with fondant rifles
before they exit the womb. Now you
have begun to imagine: to fly pine cones
over your head and murmur “Plane.”
I melt into your play: I am the ribbon
in your fist and the balloon, helium-round,
silent as a trigger, the red snow cone trailing
sugar down your wrist. I do not tell you
there are images I can’t let myself see:
constellations of toddlers forming, exploding
against a chain-link fence, the heavy doors
I slide a key card to enter blasted to shards,
the squeals of rubber mats trampled, shrieks
and lipstick multiplied and shattering forever
in a studio mirror. If only I could have left
embodiment circling the drain of the hospital
shower, shocked myself superhuman. I will
my body to shift shapes: jam locks, keep vigil
in cubbies, among mats. What mother
is not already a ghost—bitter slip, inside-out glove,
stitches and folds exposed to the atmosphere?
In morning cold, I exhale mist solid and deep
as history. I linger in the air as you learn
to hold hands, to watch close and hide well,
your eyes hunting already for shapes in the sky.
About this poem: I wrote this poem when my son was around two years old, beginning to go to preschool and leave what I felt like was a sphere of protection around our two bodies. “Rejected Persona” is my (imperfect, clunky) attempt to link gun violence, particularly the 2018 gender-motivated shooting of Maura Binkley and Nancy Van Vessem in a Tallahassee hot yoga studio, to the gun/hunting culture I grew up in and to the fraught experience of mothering a son, a child, in this country. The continuum that they exist on was not always obvious to me, but the more I plumbed the role of guns in my upbringing the more I began to see the connections between the “acceptable” violence of hunting and the atrocities we witness again and again in America. I also began to see the ways in which gun culture intertwines with sexism and, indeed, hatred of women as the horrific shooting in Tallahassee exemplified. In this poem, the speaker considers her proximity to the Tallahassee shooting, the possibility that she could easily have been a victim. She also considers the vulnerability of her small son, not only to gun violence, but to indoctrination to our patriarchal, violent culture.
“Rejected Persona: Yoga Mom” appeared in Shō No. 5.
Dorsey Craft is the author of A Brief History of Accidental Inventions, forthcoming from Texas Review Press in 2026, and Plunder (Bauhan Publishing, 2020). Her poems have appeared in Blackbird, Copper Nickel, Ploughshares, Poetry Northwest, and elsewhere. She teaches at the University of North Florida and serves as Assistant Poetry Editor at Agni. She is also the co-organizer of Dreamboat Poetry Series in Jacksonville, FL.