Category: Poetry

2010s · Poetry · The Unnamed Algorithm

Yellow

Sarah ThursdayLeave a comment

I am seven
yellow-blonde girl
with missing teeth
wearing someone else’s clothes
I smile for the camera
I don’t remember
where I am
there are so many rooms
so many stops
I am never there long enough
to know if I will miss it

I keep following my mother
my brother, too, in the car
we drive for days and months
I forget the names
of all my teachers
just shadows of school yards
they say I need glasses
I have too many absences
I think this is normal
don’t all children hold secrets
like packs of gum
at the bottom of their pockets

I love my mother
I believe her implicitly
I walk in my sleep
in every different house
to find her
I am empty without her
so we keep our clothes in bags
and in the car
they are my sister’s clothes
or someone else who outgrew them

she cuts my hair short
to get rid of the lice
it’s up past my ears
I cry like a widow
yellow-blonde hair
corpses lying under my chair
I can go back to school now
the fourth one this year

twenty years later
I will return here
it will be so much smaller
the rooms will have moved
and ghosts of yellow-blonde hair
will wander in the shadows
of school yards

First Published in Elsewhere Lit.

2010s · Poetry · The Unnamed Algorithm

My Friends Who Write Poetry

Sarah Thursday1 Comment

Our words swing from threads
across our chest. They pull,
unraveling thin lines into
a soft jagged mess.
Some of you fight it,
snip those frays clean,
tuck in all the evidence.
Some dig fingers deep
wearing fringe coats
long into summer nights.
I know a poet when I see
your words dangling,
dragging, spilling like
sloppy rainbows
out from our pockets.

First published in Uno Kudo.

2010s · Poetry · The Unnamed Algorithm

Fixing a Hole

Sarah ThursdayLeave a comment

How do you fill
a chasm?With stone or wood
or earth?An artist doesn’t fill
a chasmbut instead creates
an amphitheaterand floods the space
with songSteep gouged walls
become a torsoits beating heart
begins to sing

First published in Hedgerow: a Journal of Small Poems (November 2014)

2010s · Conversations with Gravel · Poetry · The Unnamed Algorithm

Frost

Sarah ThursdayLeave a comment

When do we lay these sticks down?
Having been rubbed raw of revival
no sparks enough for flames—
I am too tired to promise I’ll wait
faithful for another dawn.
You are more in love with saving the fire
than actually keeping us
warm and free from that frost that hangs
on branches above our heads—
it’s been itching at us for years.
I’m going inside the house now,
I will leave the door unlocked
but I won’t leave it open.
I won’t call out to you again.
My words caught in cold breath
as I pull off wet feet,
hang them on wires
stretching for decades.
Say goodbye in white crystal
particles drifting into the black.

First published in The Rainbow Journal (November 2014)

2010s · Conversations with Gravel · Poetry

Last Thread

Sarah ThursdayLeave a comment

It’s the last thread
that’s so hard to cut

The chain’s long broken
the rope’s been unraveled

I’ve swum against the currents
I’ve surfaced near the shore

The thin line’s still tangled
through ocean tide hair

It pulls out slow and shining
like a timeline of a story

so I tie it in a bow
around my finger tight

to remember
where I’ve been

2010s · Poetry · The Unnamed Algorithm

Unnamed

Sarah ThursdayLeave a comment

Write about important things
things that move me
things that crush me

Write about hurricanes
and avalanches
the earthquakes of my soul

It’s the grit beneath
my fingernails
it’s the cartilage in
my vertebrae

I am driven to expose it
to pull it out
hold it up
to the light

I am only the messenger
of all the beauty
underneath the common face
beauty in the unheard voice

I hear it
I draw the letters
to form the words
to give it name

First published in Hedgerow: A Journal of Small Poems.

2010s · Poetry

Why I Can’t Kill Daddy Longlegs Hiding in My Shower Curtain

Sarah ThursdayLeave a comment

Because I know he is home-seeking and hungry.
Because I see the fragility of eight legs holding tight to porcelain.
Because I once needed to be scooped up from drowning
showers to sunlit window panes.Because when I was nine, I had to break into our motel room on
a Friday night after church.Because my mom forgot to pick me up, but I knew she was just
sleeping inside.Because I didn’t have a key and I was sure she’d be right back.
Because the windows were slats of louvered glass, I could pull
them apart and lay them gently on the asphalt driveway.Because I was small, could slide between three removed slats, and
land on a mattressed floor.Because I’d rather sleep alone in a tiny motel room with navy-blue
carpeted halls leading to the tenants’ communal bathroom.
Because calling my father
was not an alternative.Because I knew my mother would come home soon even after I fell
asleep under a curtain of blankets.Because I knew if I was quiet I could be safe enough.
Because I couldn’t have driven myself home from church or climbed
up the window alone.Because someone had to scoop me up to push me through it.

 

First published in Gutters & Alleyways: Perspective on Poverty and Struggle.

2010s · Poetry

Lament for the Atlantic

Sarah ThursdayLeave a comment

Seas of us stretch like solar
systems. On all sides
she threads charcoal death.

Space between stars is space
between islands circled in gray.
Here, even air sinks heavy
into broken-hearted eyes.

I swim from the island of highways
and high-rises to the island
of roadless hills. Neighbored only
by sea nymphs and forever sky.

Dead wind whips like anger,
like sunrise, like avalanche.
If you stand at her edge, you must stare
right into her eyes and clench your fists.

Stand at the highest point turning
from the sea of gray to the sea of green
to the sea of gray to the sea of green

to the sea of
the universe of stars.

First published in San Pedro River Review

2010s · Poetry

Murrieta

Sarah Thursday2 Comments

When you rise early from your wide bed
pull on your long pants, brush your porcelain teeth,
do you also decide to fill your mouth with pebbles
stuff them into your cheeks for stoning small children?

When you gather the keys to your reliable car,
drink your coffee, eat your toast and eggs,
do you then grab your territorial pissing sign,
join others pushing buses full of babies off the road?

When you kiss your mop-haired children goodnight,
stroke their cool foreheads, wish them quiet dreams,
do you tell them of slashing plastic jugs of water,
pouring it out into sand like a narrow-eyed bully?

When you brush off the knees of your own fallen children,
teach them to be fair and kind, grow up strong,
do you tell them how you dream of kicking the skins
of skinny brown legs, barely able to stand?

First published in Gutters & Alleyways: Perspectives on Poverty and Struggle 2014
*On July 2, 2014, dozens of protesters in Murrieta, CA, blocked 3 buses of refugee women and children from being processed in their facilities. In 2012, the humanitarian group No More Deaths documented border patrol officers kicking, slashing, and pouring out jugs of water left for desert crossers.