Presenting engagements (including reviews) of poetry books & projects. Some issues also offer Featured Poets, a "The Critic Writes Poems" series, and/or Feature Articles.

Friday, May 1, 2015

THE CRITIC WRITES POEMS: SARAH SARAI

Three Poems by Sarah Sarai



I'm Never Worried About What I'm Worried About

A cherry tree leans into your leg
becoming.
Households must join.
Truth is one hot shield.

You know, many of my short stories
are about a woman wanting to love
and while no one in the story knows
they’re old news (Keats’ “Ode”)
(the urn itself) (the lavender pump’s apogee)
they know.

“Clouds were thin”
you reported last night
“and wispy.” In a grocery store
no one tuned into the symphony.

Cherry trees’ temporal blossoms are
fragile (See STRONG – Roget’s II)
and strum George Harrison’s guitar.
I’m quite sure I hear a civilized minuet.

_____
First published in Fifth Wednesday Journal.




The Risen Barbie

i.
If Rapunzel had a bob
If the prince were less charming
If the witch a vegetarian

If the carousel had legs

ii.
The Beatitudes Barbie
The Leper Barbie
The Dead Lazarus Barbie
The Risen Barbie

Barbie at the Well

iii.
If Hendrix
If Buddy
If Richie
If Kurt

Jim, Amy, Otis, Janis.

Nick, Sid, Tupac
The Notorious B.I.G.

iv.
If Death is real
If the Divine goes
shopping for a MacBook Air
If we achieve Paradise
If the cool kids snub us
(ah, but the wonderful witty
welcome, wherever we go)

_____
First published in Sarah Sarai’s chapbook, The Risen Barbie, Dusie Kollektiv.




Something’s Falling



Because, and here’s my point,

because now, because loosened

by small destructions, because
shrapnel of civilization down

dizzy slow, because a little hand
drowning. Something’s falling.


Because empires of our beliefs

could inherit us promised days

but something’s falling. Now,
because we summon armies and

thugs unoriginal, barter a future

placid for a present spooked,

something’s falling because weary
apples weary, over and again.



Because only history supports

as we rant at kids on stick-
trembling legs, weep on fallow
chests, join neighbors one to

a four-cornered sheet stretched

to break the inevitable, study

a sky’s hindsight: Should it have
loosened more rain, moisting drops
to shimmer oily in sun, adorned
itself nirvanic swim-pool
aquamarines it’s marveled over
or painted indigo paisleys of a Hindu

bride across its breathy canopy?



Because what else? Recode
the Rosetta of history? Or will

love to our ones as cool heat

lifts soothing to the viridian

moss out of reach but scudding
close still, because the drowning
little hand, little hand, can touch it.



_____
First published The Threepenny Review, Issue 110.


*****

Sarah Sarai was born on Long Island, moved to Los Angeles when she was eight, lives in New York City, and misses California. Her poems have been published in Ascent, The Wallace Stevens Journal, Yew, Thrush, Ping-Pong, Boston Review, West Wind Review, The Writing Disorder (to which she is a contributing editor), and other journals. The Future Is Happy, her collection, was published by BlazeVOX. To read more, see the links to her fiction, reviews, poems, at My 3,000 Loving Arms. 


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