Poem: European Holy Minimalism

Ah, there’s no friends like the old friends, she said, when all is said and done, no friends that a body can trust.
James Joyce, ‘The Sisters,’ Dubliners

The ocean’s quite clear
and swimable to all shores
we maidens hope to wash
up on

like Ulysses lured by great sex
and new tunes. How pretty to roll
on wet sand firm, for a spell
entrapped.

Ulee was restive; us too.
No Homer blowing wind
in our sails and still we
wander

plotting maps
to wealth and love, claiming talks
with God alter physics
of class

inclination and destiny
and maybe they do and maybe
they will, but think of Ulee’s
many-

callused peds treading
towards Ithaca, ‘Penelope Penelope,’
for ten years after
the war

where Patroclus
got pierced. A long time
to grieve for a friend, ten years?
It’s not.

But odyssey-enough our goals: Baja
for ten days, a new couch, a mate
advanced as our years. The troubles
with banks

bodies demons submerge
and could drown us Europeans
minimalized on shores American
where we

self-start -heal -help,
forgetting we’re holy which
we are. Water nymphs stow our
lately

soggy selves. Linens starched
by the girl and tea cups greet the old friends
not lonelier than anyone longing
for tales

of washed-up heroines tricked
but canny and artists
of the quick-change who
triumph.



From: The Future Is Happy
http://www.amazon.com/Future-Happy-Sarah-Sarai/dp/1935402358