Tag: love

17 Poems Not About a Lover · 2010s · Conversations with Gravel · Poetry

Black, the Consumption of Song

Sarah ThursdayLeave a comment

It’s still the music—
how is replaces the pulse in your veins
how it stops all the other voices,
your own cut-throat deafening.
You still swallow volume
guzzle it down like hard cider.
In that way, songs can sing from the inside out.
They balloon inside your heart
pressing up against limping muscle
until its ache rests in them.
You will always have it—
when love after love after love leaves
it still gets darker. Still you
wrap your skin in minor chords
mummy-tight until you can only move
in the way the rhythm sways.
You don’t fight that.
For a while you are carried by it.
You rest in black—
how it still comforts you.
Sometimes and eventually music moves you forward.
Slow beats for slow steps
when you are ready to hit the ground
on your own swollen feet.
For the rest of your days, you will—
as you always have—exhale melody.

First published in Cadence Collective.

2010s · Conversations with Gravel · Poetry

Dead Song

Sarah ThursdayLeave a comment

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.

2010s · Conversations with Gravel · Poetry

Unnamed Color

Sarah ThursdayLeave a comment

If I were a painter, I’d find the darkest
blue paint—thick as gravy—
push it slow across a powder-white
canvas, diagonal edge to edge,
let the ridges and valleys of the stroke
seep into a settled mass. I’d drag
the brush saturated in blue past
the easel, over my window pane
across my pale green wall
and onto my bed frame. I’d shape
the prints of my hands where I held
myself above you. Where I saw
you under me like a child, like one
who never married, never had children,
never worked twenty years in the same
company, never had to harden his heart
like police armor. I’d paint
the color of your eyes—
if they could ever be captured
in a shade made by man.

First published in Ekphrastic California.

2010s · Conversations with Gravel · Poetry

When I’ve said all the words I can say

Sarah Thursday2 Comments

I can only sound.
I dissonance.
I shutter volume.

I scrape metal to metal
–skyscraper groans
–car alarm until it backgrounds.

I tree crack from roots
–siren ambulance, fire truck.
I bone crush
–violin in a cold, dark alley.

I canyon scream
behind double pane windows.
You, inside, sit soundless.

First published in Ekphrastic California.

2010s · Conversations with Gravel · Poetry

How to Go Backwards

Sarah ThursdayLeave a comment

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.

2010s · Conversations with Gravel · How to Unexist · Poetry

How to Unexist

Sarah ThursdayLeave a comment

Go from friend to flirt to lover. Do it fast and without remorse. Stay lover for days or weeks until you become mistress. Be a good mistress until you become secret. Stay secret until you lose the key to his car. Then become lie, not a lie you’ve told but be a lie. Stay lie until your fingers break and you can no longer touch. Then become weight around a neck. One to be carried as heavy as regret. Stay weight until you become formality. Then, become cordial. Become a multiple choice response of hello, how are you, I’m fine, you’re fine, we’re fine, everyone is fine until your fineness becomes echo. Stay echo while you begin to scrape your insides out. Pull out blood vessels. Pull out gut, fat, and muscle. Pull out bone. Lick it clean. Save your heart for last. Let it feel every ounce emptying. Then become translucent. Become as clear as ice so when he looks at you he sees nothing. Hears nothing. Feels nothing. Stay clear until you become forget. Become forget until all previous days dissolve. Stay forget until it never was. Until you are not even ghost. You are just not. Just no.

First published in Cultural Weekly.

2010s · All the Tiny Anchors · Poetry

Car Accident, 14 Months Going

Sarah ThursdayLeave a comment

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.

2010s · Conversations with Gravel · Poetry

Record Scratch

Sarah ThursdayLeave a comment

How many times do we
replay the broken record
How many times do we
get up and jump the needle

Do we hold on for nostalgia’s sake
Do those crackle-rich and cotton-
thick grooves sing better songs

How many repeats and repeats
until it’s time to retire or never
Just resign ourselves to unrest
get up again and again

Records don’t learn new songs
They don’t unscratch or smooth out
Should we pack it up and
store it in our memories

Move on to modern times
where everything and everyone
is easily replaceable

First published in Poet’s Haven.

Conversations with Gravel

Conversations with Gravel Review Four

Sarah ThursdayLeave a comment

Kind words about my upcoming full-length book from Donny Jackson. 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.

2010s · All the Tiny Anchors · Poetry

The Atmosphere I Miss

Sarah ThursdayLeave a comment

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.