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.
A fluttering tension rests
at the base of my spine
a tight coil bound by string
wound up, spiraling
to the base of my neck
I try to sooth it, I say
“I love you, base of my spine”
but it only trembles
I try to ease it, tips of my
fingers trace the lines up
through the base of my skull
pressing soft, I say to it
“I love you, base of my skull”
but it only tightens
I try to listen yet it will
not relax or surrender
it will not release control
I say, “I love you, tender skin”
but my heart knows what
my body is suffocating for
First published in On the Grid Zine.
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.
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.
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
The Long Beach Press Telegram published an article written by Mary Anne Perez about the poetry and literary scene in my community. I was thrilled to help spotlight all the amazing things my friends are doing.
Sarah Thursday 