Very excited to have a poem published in the newest issue of Yellow Chair Review! “Oil-Black” is one about my grandfather I wrote shortly after his death last year. I had the hardest time setting on revisions for this poem, but decided it was time to send it out into the world. There are many fine poems in this issue, including one from my friend, Jeri Thompson. Enjoy!
Tag: closure
On the Grid Part 2
2nd poem up on On the Grid Zine! This one is “Colors for Bruising” and was one of my more recently written poems. I’m glad it found a home on a site for such an important topic as our mental health.
How I Stopped Naming Lost Things
for my birthday
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
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
Love Letter No.1: To My Pit-Bull Self
I love the teeth of your love
how you pit-bull deep
into the flesh of loving
How you make shrines
in the empty spaces,
abandoned apartments
Shrines to former residents
of borrowed books and toiletries
envelopes full of photographs
and letters in pen
How you never fill
the same space with new
but keep building out
expand the frames and floors
How you know when to change the locks
and when to nail it shut
I love how you calculate
estimate the risk
How you trust
the unnamed algorithm
the intuitive push, flashing “Yes,
love this one, let that one in!”
How soft your wrought-iron grip
holds every name tight
each face, its own story
each moment, a glass in your pane
How you refuse to argue
about the wrong
or right way to love
I love how so much of it matters
how you will forgive
as many times
as they will call
and ask for it
How you defend this weakness
with the expense of wasted time
Your time-to-give being
your love currency
not words, not gifts,
not your doing-for-me
But your minutes and hours
your speak to me, eat with me
your listen and watch with me
sit in this space of air
I breathe with me is love
I love how love-greedy you get
How you collect time
and stuff it in bags and boxes
shove it on shelves, in closets
covering walls, blocking doorways
in empty apartments
You guard-dog this house
an unapologetic hoarder
How you refuse to purge it
refuse to loosen your grip
Set shrines in windowsills
light blood candles
There is always room
for more
2-3-14
Originally published in Silver Birch Press, Self-Portrait Series.
Also listen on Soundcloud.
NCCP Book Club
This is really a thing I am doing. Nancy Lynée Woo and I are part of a book club discussion from the National Center for Children in Poverty, which chose our book, Gutter & Alleyways: Perspectives on Poverty and Struggle. Sometimes I still feel like that girl living on the constant edge of chaos, fighting to survive. Then I see this photo of grown up me, all together and stuff. If you have the time to join the discussion on March 18th (11:00 am Pacific Time), I would be honored to share this moment with you. Follow this link to register nccp.org/bookclub.html. It’s not too late to order your copy of the book in time for the discussion if you haven’t already. sadiegirlpress.com/bookstore
Westwood Boulevard (Why I Can’t Go Back)
I.
because I’d have too many questions
like does her husband know
have you ever met her children
do your parents know about her
does she hate your new car
or your new 60-inch TV
does she love the extra 20 pounds
I left behind
II.
because I know exactly
how small your ass really is
how you taste in the shower
how your eyes are lost
first thing in the morning
how you loved those thin pillows
from World War II
how you bought a fat one
just for me
how I know you really meant it
at the time
III.
because I’m still counting days
they are all anniversaries
of first times, of last times
of times we drove for no reason
my calendar dates lay over
like a transparency
so it’s all how-long-since
how-many-days-until-it’s-been
and every case on People’s Court
mentions November and Hurricane Sandy
then we’re standing there on the Boulevard
you said we need to talk
find some place for dinner
we missed our movie
I could unmake plans with you all weekend
it was cold enough to wear a sweater
I can almost count the hours
IV.
because I forgot to hate you
though you really wished I would
V.
because I told everyone
with eyes or ears near these words
I spoke you out loud
I own my story—this is mine
I will love it long after your scent
is rubbed off my page
First published in Tic-Toc Anthology (Kind of a Hurricane Press).
If I Ever Have Children
If I ever have children
they will never know me in my thirties
the woman checking it off
all the things-to-do
like a master’s degree
and home buying
like falling in love completely
and writing a book of how it ends
finding new community
and loving her whole body flawed
flinging open all the doors
and surrendering to the unknown next
If I ever have children
they will never know me in my twenties
the woman fighting against it
to save her own soul
find her own belief in God
and lose her given self
venture out from community
live alone, love alone
sort through the old baggage
give them names and abandon them
find focus for talents and energies
and heal the damage at all costs
If I ever have children
they will never know me in my teens
young girl trying masks
on and off each year
like too many friends
and partying far too young
like black dyed-hair and boots
sinking down through the cracks
sharp turn into a Christian life
and a radical-faced community
stepping through the windows
where she’d press her face to the glass
If I ever have children
they will never know me as a child
a broken girl holding
a green Picasso heart
running with one parent from the other
always leaving school early
memories in paper bags stashed
in the trunk of a broken-down car
with walk-in closets for the skeletons
and attics for hiding and running free
words swallowed in torn pieces
forcing her destiny as a poet
Originally published in The Mayo Review, also included in The Unnamed Algorithm.
Listen to the poem on SoundCloud, from Anchors CD.
Flourish
The possibility of birth since our death
has passed, yet— in nine months
a new life is here now, where you abandoned us.
This Thursday girl, my child, my only daughter,
has become the woman you will never know, like
you once knew
the most unlit folds of me.
I birthed her from my own black ashes and none
of the fragile skin of you. She lives in my night side,
grows in those thick shards, those tire weight pocks.
She flourishes in the white vacuum space you
sucked out from me
like a plane window under pressure cracked,
spidering—
instantly gone.
She loves the deafened stillness and
grows in my gnawing hunger, grows out
through my fingernails and the follicles
of my new hair-the softness of which
you will never know—
like you once knew the lather and rinse of it.
First published in The Mayo Review (2014), also appears in All the Tiny Anchors.
Cathedral
I take you with me
like a chain around my wrist
I took you through security
brought you to England
and on the bus to Wales
I pushed you up my arm
with bangles clinking soft
I went to Ireland to forget
the sound of your low voice
in every hotel you wait
for me to sleep without you
under pillow-white comforters
and clouds under roads
of endless miles and miles
I change my nightshirt
I change my long pants
but I find you there
in the bottom of my shoes
I met a poet who married an artist
after years and years of not
their deep folds of white skin
stinks of my undreamt dreams
I count the days unhad
in the cracks of aging stones
in ancient Scottish castles
dissolving like dead paper
black and grey and brown
they all eat like you
knives leading forks
in sway and swoon
painting food on plates
but only in reverse
pinks follow greens
orange and tan rising up
leaving only empty white
five thousand miles
two hundred days
I can’t dilute you out
filling red wine with water
flowing over the rim
I see you in the gift shop
and in the hotel shower
I leave without you
touching my own skin
brushing my own hair
I am whole without you
like a lone cathedral tower
gray stones on stones
without walls or ceilings
for centuries it stands
without congregation
or faithful believers
still, it stands without you
First appeared in The Mayo Review (2014), also in All the Tiny Anchors
The Truth of My Skin
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.
Sarah Thursday 