“Skin As Thick As Walruses”, along with “White Sandals”, is included in the anthology Disorder: Mental Illness and ItsAffects published by Red Dashboard now available. I feel extremely honored to be a part of this anthology since this issue is very near to my heart.
Before you buy your very own copy, you can listen to a recording done with BobKat. Bobby Cuff selected music they had prerecorded and without any planning or previewing, we recorded this track in one take. The timing was magical. I hope you will enjoy.
These are the kind of poems
they want us to write,
about black-red birds and the sky
and the plumpness of tomatoes
soft against your tongue,
how it relates to our humanity
and our connection to the eternal.
But I don’t relate to birds
and tomatoes (though I
will eat them endlessly)
do not keep me up at night.
When I am forced to flatten
the pages of my journal,
it’s the calluses on his fingers
how I want to scrape them
scratch his dead skin off
until he forgets me,
but he has already
forgotten me.
Just before midnight, I lay under
the Palms Springs sky
on silver-blue foam in a
saltwater pool with the edge
of your tongue and curves
of your long fingers pulling
me towards your liberation
of my body from
the taut strings of
my bathing suit
around my neck.
“You fall in love
with someone who knows
the same silence as you”
–Daniel McGinn
I fell in love with the man
who knew the same silence—
the silence of trains up close
in roaring motion, the strength
is deafening, a lulling voice
Its constancy feels like comfort
I loved the man who knew
the silence of city lights
from hill tops at midnight
The stars blushing down
at Los Angeles sprawled out
limbs open wide
The silence of public spaces
after dark, after closing,
after all other souls
are empty from it
I fell in love with the man
whose tongue filled
with paper and sand,
whose throat I saw dancing,
telling secrets, whose hands—
those hands said things
out loud for the first time
I’d been listening for years
Hear it? The silence, it swallows me
You seemed taller in the trees
Hair parted hanging long as limbs
How high did you climb then
How long did you remain
among the leafless branches
Twenty year old girl
Newly mothered
You must feel young smiling
Quilted dress does not stop you
You stand up and lean over down
It is dusk on another day
You swing— arms open— in the forest
Fingers spread wide
Thick red cardigan
You must feel free
I only knew you this way
Homemade dresses and open-toed shoes
You hated feeling closed in
You did come back for her
You must have known
As the woods grew dark
A new decade was upon you
A chance to begin again
The mountain air, crisp
I imagine, filled your lungs slow
Head tilted back as you swing
Back, smiling, and
Swing forward
First appeared in Healing the Heart of Ophelia.
Recently published on Cadence Collective.
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).
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
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.
“Skin As Thick As Walruses”, along with “White Sandals”, is included in the anthology Disorder: Mental Illness and Its Affects published by Red Dashboard now available. I feel extremely honored to be a part of this anthology since this issue is very near to my heart.
Sarah Thursday 