You are the mistake I want to make
I will wrap myself in your red flags
and let you peel them off
one silk layer at a time
You are the regret I want to have
I’ll bind you in my caution tape
lay on a bed of warning signs
cold metal against warm skin
cools your burning in my eyes
You are the fucked up mess
I want to roll around in
like a mud happy dog
drenched in your scent
I will not shake you out
How do you unsense me?
(First published in East Jasmine Review)
Once again, two more of my poems are on The Poet’s Haven this week! “The Atmosphere I Miss” was included in All the Tiny Anchors, but I always hoped it would find an independent home. The second one, “Record Scratch” has never found a home and I’m very happy it finally has! Both poems are different perspectives of holding on and letting go. Still miss that atmosphere, still hoping the record will unskip itself.
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.
Your arm hit the blinds
they swung like a pendulum
brightlight
brightlight
piercing my eyes you
held up your hand
to stop the sun
to shade my face
it felt just like love
so I sunk
into you
in the silence
First published in First Literary Review East and included in All the Tiny Anchors.
I keep smiling while I read them. All three texts. Sitting at a Greek place with coworkers at a long table for fifteen. Middle aged women and their husbands are asking about you. They all want to meet the man who put stars under my skin. I just told them about the place we found with 30 minute lines down the block, where they create gourmet pizza to order. All of them want to try it. Three texts at once isn’t like you. The waiter sets the cheese on fire and everyone is opening their mouths at the flames. I’m still burning on fumes from last Sunday when you’d kissed me full enough for days. I had felt lucky all week, lucky enough for months. I read them now. I keep smiling, but I am losing the ability to hear. My head goes underwater as our table splits like an aquarium wall, everyone else on the outside. All at once I am wishing there was a magic portal to stop time, an alarm clock for waking up, cameras to be revealed as a cruel joke played. Someone must have stolen your phone, is holding you hostage, making you text those things in English I cannot translate. I have to leave immediately. I leave my coat. I leave my purse. Leave my untouched food on the plate. I try to climb into the circuits of my phone, step through satellites, make you look me in the eyes. Make you face me when you fire that gun.
First published in Carnival Lit Mag, also in All the Tiny Anchors.
Listen on SoundCloud.
for Josh
I wish I had a sonic screwdriver
I wish I had a magic wand
I wish I had a time machine
or pixie dust or a book of spells
I wish I had a genie lamp
I wish I had the holy grail
I wish I had a flying carpet
or a portal or an Atlantis key
I wish you were three
in the back seat of my car
singing an 80s Cure song
I wish you were sixteen
driving with me to open mic
singing an 80s Cure song
I wish my love was enough
I wish you weren’t there
I wish you and me were anywhere
far and away, anywhere else
Originally published in Carnival Lit Mag, 2014
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).
You, a landscape sloping
down into soft valleys
where I trace your bare
terrain outlined in moonlight,
I rest on your dark side
how you speak clearest
in silence still as mountain tops
I, lying in your slant night,
an eager traveler pulling
at your dawn, sunrise us—
turn and move earth in me.
First published in Cliterature.
Issue #2 of In-Flight Literary Magazine is now available for your viewing pleasure! I am very pleased to have two poems I am especially fond of included, “Paper Airplane” and “Gill Growing”. The feature poet of this issue is fellow Gutters & Alleyways contributor, Anthony Khayat. In addition to poetry, this site also features fiction pieces. Take some time and read some creative work with your new year. Get inspired and send them some of your own for the next issue!
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.
Sarah Thursday 