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.
Kind words about my upcoming full-length book from Donna Hilbert. 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.
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.
1. Swell: fluids rush in panic, raise the skin
like a flag, damage still unassessed
2. Purple: t-shirt logo wearing of pain, most
celebrity, most sympathy for self
3. Blue: first layer under, uglier, sign of longer
lasting mark
4. Green: usually on the edges only, ghost
sleeping under your skin
5. Brown: dead blood vessels dissolving,
novelty gone, even you don’t want to look
6. Orange: almost gone enough to be rubbed
off with spit and thumb, will it away
7. Yellow: untraceable outlines only faith
remembers, sing it a lullaby, let it go undreamt
First published in On the Grid Zine.
Kind words about my upcoming full-length book from Alexis Rhone Fancher. 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.
Thanks to Ellen Weber, my entire set from my feature at the Ugly Mug on July 25, 2018 was recorded and compiled into a playlist. Half of which are poems from my last chapbook, Seventeen Poems Not About a Lover, and from my next full-length book, Conversations with Gravel.
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.
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
I remember more than I want to admit
More than I can say out loud.
So much of it has never passed
through my vocal chords.
I can recall a picture at will.
I went so far as to type it out.
I can hold the pages in hand,
but I am afraid to see them.
Afraid to hear them read aloud.
It remains in my stomach,
where I stuffed it.
Sometimes it surges up like vomit
and I catch it in my throat.
It’s like a rope pulled tighter.
My pain sits and I can not speak.
I am voiceless.
I find other things to talk about.
It settles back down.
I move on.
I have ulcers.
First published in Healing the Heart of Ophelia (2001).
Sarah Thursday 