I wait no more for your polite
I run no longer to your cordial
I let no wind carry
let no night star
I fight not for your uncertain
for your wander, for your lost
not for your stroke, not your soothe
No more gray ink
photograph gaze
No collar bone
valley of skin
I set fire to your words
I drown your colors
all swirl of rainbow
I lie in your grave of kindness
I cough out your breath
I spit you out
wipe the taste of you
from my mouth
First published in Ekphrastic California.
Remove hands. Remove tongue. Remove legs.
Leave heart. Leave eyes. Leave voice.
Remove say.
Leave said.
Remove fuck. Remove kiss and dark car.
Leave ache and story.
Remove naked.
Leave cold.
Remove knowing.
Leave knowing.
Remove lover and want.
Leave honest and cordial.
Remove betray. Remove conflict. Remove open.
Leave close. Leave accept.
Remove complicated. Remove layers. Remove hold.
Leave alone. Leave alone. Leave alone.
First published in Cultural Weekly.
Everything with you was
like a car accident,
the kind someone expects
months before, but when
the point of impact arrives,
no one is ever prepared.
Seatbelts and airbags don’t
stop the severity of its
suddenness or the metal
frame collapsing and crushing
through skin and bone. I can
brace my elbows to my chest
stop the outside coming in,
but the forces stay in motion
and you crush my heart
in love. You leap out just
at the edge of the overpass
leaving me descending forward
in suspension. I chose
to keep my door locked
and feel the fall, feel
the collision. I still won’t take
one single moment back.
First published in Poet’s Haven.
At this point, it’s not him
I miss, not his back of
red-brown constellations,
but my own atmosphere
I knew naked in front
of his flat screen TV.
It’s not his goose-neck car
orange and black enormity,
but the happy surrender
of the passenger seat,
not driving, not road-thinking.
Clear-minded, I miss not
making plans on Saturdays
and on Sunday mornings.
It’s not his tongue,
or its softness, but
the fullness of my mouth
at its opening.
First published in Poet’s Haven.
Sometimes I let Damage win.
We’ve been wrestling for days
on the edge of my teeth.
No matter how much hair pulling
or ear biting, sometimes
I give in.
I curl up like a small child
and lie in her bony lap.
Some may say I wear her
like a cross on my back,
but she’s the one wearing me,
wraps my heart around her like a cape,
splits my head across her knees
using them as shin guards.
As a child, she ran me
like a bully-sister,
warded off the boys
like Buffy with her stake.
She kept all my keys under her tongue
clenched by pit-bull teeth.
I learned to pick my battles.
She can sleep for weeks at a time
in her coffin-bed night.
That’s when I dance all night,
swim moonlight-naked,
run head-first for love,
and make no more apologies.
When she wakes again, she yanks me down,
my legs kicking–my fists punching. I thought
I was done with her. I thought
we’d shared our last breaths–
but we’re here again, now.
So I let her pull me into her embrace,
crying like a knee-scraped school girl.
Then, after a while, D and I lie on our backs,
listen to records as loud as we can,
and sing along until our throats hurt.
First published in On the Grid Zine.
Kind words about my upcoming full-length book from Mariano Zaro. Preorders for Conversations with Gravel are available though October 5th at the SadieGirlPress.com bookstore. You can pay $3 for shipping or select Pick Up if you are local when you first open your Cart. Pay only $9 with promo code: PresaleCWG at the Checkout stage.
This is where I don’t know what’s next
this is where I get lost in the desert
forty years of circle wandering
This is where I try to fill the cracks
this is where I see how much I can fit
how many pages I can write
how many nights of alcohol
pushing limits where I thought I’d stop
the line I wouldn’t cross
This is where I close my eyes and lay back
in the thick sea salt floating
underneath stars I can never count
This is where I stop
naming anyone friend or lover
There is where I keep stirring
the increasing mess of me
dissolve the powder
I am pudding-thick and ready to serve
This is where I am the forest fire and
the arsonist and the fireman
mask wearing and sweating smoke
This is where the word you
is cut out in tiny rectangles
and collected in bags for confetti
where I forget what clocks I am watching
what timeline I had to follow
all the things called age appropriate
This is where I am done
and done and done knowing
that I ever knew
First published in On the Grid Zine.
I’m really excited to announce my newest full-length collection of poetry, Conversations with Gravel, being released early in October 2018. This collection was 5 years in the making with poems based on love, heartbreak, and coping with loss. It’s 110-pages, perfect bound with cover and interior gorgeous art by Jennifer Takahashi. This book can be purchased on SadieGirlPress.com and soon at Made by Millworks in Long Beach. Preorder online with the discount code PresaleCWG.
This is where I stop biting my nails
This is where I kick off my shoes
This is where I wear a shorter skirt
This is where I put on all the jewelry
This is where I stop answering calls
or checking my email
or returning the texts
This is where I spend the money
and show up by myself
and leave way past my bedtime
This is where I stop holding back
or saying his name
or not smiling at strangers
This is where I get off the couch
and out of the deep end
and push my toes into the mud
First published in On the Grid Zine.
I said it all. Slit a line down my throat and pried it open like a dissected frog. I bent over and shook my head upside down to dump all that shit out. I don’t have time for ulcers anymore so I cut a line through my esophagus, past my heart to my stomach. I used the sharpest knife I could find and scraped them out. Word after word corroding the stomach walls. daddy, sick, penis, bedroom, underwear My hands covered in black-tar memories. I scrape them all out. father, protect, shhhhh, coarse hairs, vagina I thrust the knife in deeper until I find the last of them. child, baby, girl, dim light, daddy I washed them all in the sink. I scrubbed, rinsed, and dried. Then set them in the full daylight sun. Some I kept, put them on the highest shelf. Others went one-by-one, slow and deliberate into a grinding disposal. The last of them rest safely between pages of poetry.
First published in Then & Now: Conversations with Old Friends
Sarah Thursday 