Category: Poetry

All the Tiny Anchors · Books · Publications

Review of All the Tiny Anchors in East Jasmine Review

Sarah Thursday1 Comment

The newest issue of East Jasmine Review, Vol. 2 Issue 3, includes a wonderful book review by K. Andrew Turner of All the Tiny Anchors. Two of them poems in the book, “Words in Stone and Liquid” and “The Truth of My Skin” were first published in EJR earlier this year. I am deeply honored that Mr. Turner wrote such generous words about the book. He covers each of the four sections to show the story arch. He also quotes specific lines from the poems to illustrate his points, which makes it feel so much more personal. Please check out all the issues of East Jasmine Review. (They are all currently on sale for less that coffee at Starbucks!)

If you’d like to get our own copy of All the Tiny Anchors, you can buy it directly from Sadie Girl Press or find it on Amazon.

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2010s · All the Tiny Anchors · Poetry

Words In Stone and Liquid

Sarah ThursdayLeave a comment

You said “I love her”
sitting cross-legged in front of me
on the side of the trail, under
that tree where we’d once kissed
like frenzied lovers. The same words
I’d held between my teeth,
circling for weeks waiting
for the space to lay them down.

I thought your words were liquid soap
in the cups of your fingers where
you washed my hair with them,
dragged them across my shoulders,
down the valley of my spine, and deftly
through the inlets of my toes.

How you said those words with your voice
seemed too easy, a well-worn sweater
pulled on in the dark. They formed
on your tongue like weighted olive
branches reaching out. Her name
was old-familiar from those books
you shoved back behind your shelf.

So I laid out my own pebbled words
neatly in rows and columns, though
they would never wash your skin,
only seep in this soil where, like
a hundred times before, I sat
across from you cross-legged.

.

First published in East Jasmine Review, also included in All The Tiny Anchors.

2014 · Poetry · Publications

Attack of the Poems!

Sarah ThursdayLeave a comment

10610814_10204936786610132_3165700428228359159_n The second installment of A Poet is a Poet No Matter How Tall: Episode II Attack of the Poems is out now! Not only to I get to have a poem of mine in this incredible anthology edited by the gorgeous Raundi Kai Moore-Kondo, I get to share these pages with an incredible number of my friends, including my niece, Kailani, and my former student, Hailey. You should pick up  a copy of this goodness and read the ridiculous amount of age friendly poetry filled with love! Get it here at the Createspace store, or find it on Amazon.

2010s · All the Tiny Anchors · Poetry

The Truth of My Skin

Sarah ThursdayLeave a comment

Pores in my skin once
empty are now full of black
coarse hairs. Growth once fine

and translucent, now
pushes out beyond the surface,
my body in rebellion of my mind

Cells on my left eyelid
multiply fast in an unmatched race
against the right, laying in tiny folds

along the crease, I cannot
blink them out or tuck them in
they will not let me lie about

my time on earth
There are scars on my knees
fading slow, sinking into the white

clarity of neighboring skin
They are forcing me to forget you—
to forget what—to forget where I last

held proof of it
Maybe it’s time to allow age
to love wisdom more than sorrow

My skin has shed entirely ten times
and again since the last time
your breath knew it

First published in East Jasmine Review, also included in All the Tiny Anchors.

2010s · Poetry · The Unnamed Algorithm

Not Sleeping

Sarah ThursdayLeave a comment 
I can't keep
not sleeping at night
I can't keep
letting all those
        open cupboard doors
pull my shoulder blades
I can't keep
hoping for that miracle
        change black tea
        into coffee and cream
I can't keep 
recycling those words
        said and unsaid
replies and responses
never meet resolution
I can't keep
my head full of bees
whispering why
        it doesn't matter
        it never matters
I can't keep
eating the edges of my cuticles
it won't grow flat
I can't keep
my ear to my gut
it's holding on to a secret
        I'm listening
        it's not telling
I can't keep
waiting by the phone
waiting for that email
        to make it right
it will never be right
I can't keep
saying I don't mind
I get it-I understand
        I don't
I can't keep
not surrendering to anything
since the switch flipped
        it got broke
        I can't switch it back
I can't keep
a single person as ideal
as I have loved them
        stop idealizing
I can't keep
all the names off my lips
they push out daily
        hourly I form them
        my mouth aches
I can't keep
this pencil moving
        its eraser is shrinking
there's more mistakes to make
I can't keep
presuming the road's closed
my feet are swelling
        until it hurts to walk
        but I walk anyway
I can't keep
listening to the air in my lungs
rub against my nostrils
        I hear myself living
        I need to be sleeping
 
4-16-13
First Published in Something’s Brewing, Kind of a Hurricane Press (April 2014)
2010s · Poetry · The Unnamed Algorithm

Child of the Alleyway

Sarah ThursdayLeave a comment

We were five, sometimes more,
in a one-bedroom duplex
with its back turned away
from the street. We made
it work, split the space

with my brother in the laundry,
and a cloth foldout couch.
We had two dogs and two cats
so the house was never empty.
I knew well the back ends

of other people’s houses,
apartments and wood fences,
gardens and add-on porches.
Telephone poles like redwoods
stood in a forest of garage doors

and parking spaces, while
sunlight and shadows played
hide-and-seek across the sky.
On holidays like Thanksgiving,
food drive cans of green beans,

cranberries and yellow corn,
and boxes of instant mashed potatoes
landed on our back-front porch,
three brown steps, peeling paint
peeling wood from white washed walls.

We painted the kitchen red
with forest green trim, so
it always felt like Christmas
underneath the long wires
across much taller buildings.

Originally appeared in Ishaan Literary Review.

All the Tiny Anchors · Books · Publications

Reviews of All the Tiny Anchors

Sarah ThursdayLeave a comment

I got my second unsolicited review on Amazon! I am very humbled at the kind words that people are sharing with me publicly and privately. The collection is based on a real heartbreak I experienced. Much of the journey in creating the book was a healing process. I wanted to tell the story in the best way I knew how and be done with it. I really wasn’t sure how people would react since its a very specific theme and personal story. The poems are not experimental and don’t try to push envelops. They are just honest pieces of my heart. Every time someone tells me how the book has affected them, I am truly honored that my poems are finding their way into the lives of others. Thank you!

Check out the Amazon reviews. 

All the Tiny Anchors · Books · Publications

They have arrived!

Sarah ThursdayLeave a comment

Copies of All the Tiny Anchors have arrived! They are beautiful. It’s a culmination of over a year’s labor of love. You can buy it through the Sadie Girl Press Bookstore, Amazon, pick up a copy in person from me, or stop by Gatsby Books in Long Beach or Read On Till Morning at Crafted in San Pedro (as soon as I can bring them copies).

2014-07-30 08.33.16

All the Tiny Anchors · Books · Publications

Ordered copies of my book!

Sarah ThursdayLeave a comment

Cover of AtTAI approved my proof copy of All the Tiny Anchors and ordered copies which should arrive in about a week and a half! The book will be available through the Sadie Girl Press Bookstore, Amazon, and even on Kindle in a few days. When I receive my copies, they will also be available at Gatsby Books and Read On Till Morning.

2010s · 2014 · Poetry · Publications · The Unnamed Algorithm

January 1991

Sarah ThursdayLeave a comment

In the bathroom of that old theater
is where it started for us.
You stood by the sink
and we met eyes through the mirror.
I had cut my hair short,
dyed my blond hair black.
You were so heavy metal
with your endless platinum hair
and black suede boots with fringe
that made me resist you.
But I kept hearing rumors
that you liked my favorite bands
like The Cure and even Scattered Few.
You were my age
and the same height as me,
we were both on the threshold
of becoming women,
of defining our future selves.
Back in nineteen ninety-one
we’d come for the same reason
to hear the bands pour their hearts out
to bare their souls on the stage.
You must have understood it
the need to feel it raw
the bloody heart pulsing.
I looked through the mirror at you
in that bathroom in January,
the decade still fresh and undefined.
We talked about the band
the way we always would.
You smiled with uncertainty,
I smiled back in my arrogance.

Originally published on Cadence Collective