New poem posted on The Gambler Mag: Global Warming. Send them a poem and take your chance!
Category: 2010s
Sunken
Click here to listen to live recording with music!
You were always in need of sleep
always closing your eyes
lying against me
I built myself around you
a place of safe-rest
Let those deep gut-long sighs
out into our warm space
rubbed your dark-circled eyes
when I bathed you
in my wide comfort
I pressed for your surrender
my hands on your jaw
I know your eyelids
better than your eyes
You said it was me, not it
You said it serious
so I’d believe you
but sleep is not surrender
and job-tired was your cover
Your heart-tired sunk me
under, down, below
There isn’t a long enough bed
I’d never be enough rest
First published on Cadence Collective
How to Lose 25 Pounds Without Dieting, Pills, or Exercise
I am incredibly excited to share this recording from, Anchors, a 12 track spoken word album that I will have available very soon. Lovingly produced in collaboration with Blacksheep Music (Karlee A. Tittle Cuff on violin, Bobby Cuff production).
(Click link to listen) How to Lose 25 Pounds Without Dieting, Pills, or Exercise
1. Open a Christmas card from a long lost love who found you on the internet, not on Facebook, especially if that long lost love broke your heart when you were young enough to idealize the heartache and especially if that card was also an apology.
2. Obsess about the million of possible reasons he sent that card the old fashioned way with stamp and pen after fourteen years of not-speaking-to-you-again, especially if there is no phone number or email included, just a return address.
3. Let him back into your well-worn heart without real answers, let him apologize again and again, but let him be unexplained and so much kinder and so much softer in the eyes.
4. Lose a lot of sleep buzzing constant with the weight you attach to his every syllable, every familiar gesture laced to his new grown-man charm, especially lose sleep waiting weeks in between the excuses you both invent to relive your lost connection.
5. Dive in very deep the moment he kisses you, do not look up, do not hold on to anything from the surface, keep pushing forward and down, let the pressure crush you, let him have every last ounce of oxygen.
6. Remain only in the present, minute to minute, live like you must love him for the lifetime you’ve lost, and never try to add up those years in between or account for his lack of details, live for the now reality of your skin and sweat and breath.
7. Surrender all your doubts and lay them unquestioning at his feet, do not see it coming, do not brace yourself, do not know you should have known, do not have any assurance but his hands through your hair, and do not ever regret it.
Text version published in the Heartbreak Anthology, edited by Karineh Mahdessian
All the Ways I Love You, Long Beach
Check out my poem on Cadence Collective, about my home city, Long Beach. I moved literally more than 20 times before I was ten and started my eighth school in 5th grade. I always felt out of place because we were really poor and pretty much homeless (not one of our own) for a few years. Then in 1984, we moved to Long Beach to a duplex in an alley off 7th and Junipero. It wasn’t a nicer place, but our tornado lives just blended in with the rest of my surroundings. (Which is what Child of the Alleyway is about.)
I moved to North Long Beach for middle school and high school. It felt more like a normal life than anything I’d know before then. After high school, I moved back to the South Bay area for a while, but it never felt like home. I returned to Long Beach in ’98 and have lived in almost each corner of it. It still makes sense to me. It’s diverse and messy and cultured and poor and familied and wealthy and gangster and ghetto and historic and avenued and civic and artsy and we all mix together in this beautiful stew.
Sonic Screwdriver
I wish I had a sonic screwdriver
I wish I had a magic wand
I wish I had a time machine
or pixie dust or a book of spells
I wish I had a genie lamp
I wish I had the holy grail
I wish I had a flying carpet
or a portal or an Atlantis key
I wish you were three
in the back seat of my car
singing an 80s Cure song
I wish you were sixteen
driving with me to open mic
singing an 80s Cure song
I wish my love was enough
I wish you weren’t there
I wish you and me were anywhere
far and away anywhere else
5-2-13
Hostage
At work he says to me, “How are you?
The last time we saw you, you ran out on
dinner. We all wondered where you went,
so we held your mom hostage.” He jokes,
all smiling up a storm like I’d have an
explanation for him like I forgot my oven
was on or left my wallet at home. But
I know I’ve seen him since that night
at a work meeting somewhere. That was
almost exactly five months ago and
I don’t bring those memories to work
with me. I don’t put the train-wreck
feeling on the player at school while
I got my authoritative hands on my hips.
So I change the subject. He doesn’t
know what an ass he’s being. Sometimes
they just don’t know.
4-19-13
Originally published in Eunoia Review, 11-4-13
My Mother Taught Me
By direct or indirect means
things my mother taught me are
that makeup isn’t that important
that shoes can often constrain you
warning signs can be challenges
and walls are meant for climbing
that authority must be questioned
that no one is really in charge here
elevator buttons must all be pushed
and puddles must be stepped in
that fancy restaurants are too serious
that dancing and singing heals the soul
school and work will still be around
even when you take the days off
that clothes are mostly functional
that limits are mostly imaginary
how pets are better than some humans
and the end is just around this corner
that children can still teach us things
that the emperor isn’t wearing clothes
we make funny faces when we’re angry
and to keep only things that lighten the load
5-12-13
Night Birds
At night, late past
twelve, I hear them.
Loud chirping birds
clear like night sounds
unmuddied by day
droning. They are
unapologetic. Sharp-
shouting, “I am heard!”
No contest for their
platform, no shove-
pushing, first-in-line
claim-staking. They
are joyous bastards.
4-5-13
Originally published in Eunoia Review, 11-3-13
Once we were angry youth…
Once we were angry youth
shaved heads and colored hair
When I saw you were tragic
I adhered to you
So many secrets to keep
so much truth to grasp
We made honest promises
and everything we felt
it was sacred
Velvet capes and monkey boots
it was The Cure and L.S.U.
Music sang so many things
we knew them all by heart
We sat against the stereo
volume up high
as if to absorb it
inhale its passion
the truth of it all
was in guitar strings
and piano keys
I was anchored to you
in the hurricane of our youth
We outlasted the storm
and the years became memories
and miles grew between us
You and I got regular haircuts
and wore practical shoes
Always and always
I swore to keep us tied
I’d be that solid girl
who cleaned up after
those natural disasters
But the tides have changed
and it’s you who set sail
you pulled up the anchor
and I am untethered
The current and our priorities
the list of things we hold as true
are no longer matched
Faithful wife of twenty years
I am still living alone
Mother of teenagers
I am the mother of none
Woman of the God
I no longer believe in
I know it was only loyalty
that tied us still
You hardly listen to music
and the song in my heart
is the saddest melody
I release you-though you’ve been gone
We are no longer angry youth
Will you return on another tide
Will time rise and fall
like the ocean waves
Will the anchors never sink
in the same deep waters
I am drifting out far
I know I can swim
But you were the only one
who knew the beginning and the end
long letters in pen and phone calls
salsa and bookstores at midnight
long drives to nowhere for the sake
of the songs on the stereo
and the promises and the secrets
we have none left to keep
3-3-13
Originally appeared on Jackie & Tanya’s Friendship Blog, 3-14-13
How He Is Not My Child
I didn’t stay up at the hospital until three a.m. waiting for the
doctors to assess the situation. I didn’t have to be the one to
sign papers for the insurance company, for permission to treat,
for release of legal responsibility. I didn’t have to field the
calls, protect him from his mother, sit next to him for hours
under the cold florescent lights of anger. I did not bare the
weight of pen on paper to surrender my flesh and blood to the
intervention of complete strangers. I am not the parent
deciding always how much to force him to wake up early, get
up out of bed, and live his life, or how much to let him sleep,
let him fail classes, let him learn from his own mistakes like a
boy on the verge of adulthood. I didn’t watch the labor of
sixteen years calling out from rooftops for men in uniforms to
pull him down, dress his wounds, search for more weapons.
8-10-13
Originally published on Cadence Collective, 10-15-13
Sarah Thursday 