Thursday, January 30, 2020

"this poet is tuned in to the idiosyncratic and has something to say about it" - review of Strapless



Susan Tepper wrote a delightful Amazon review of That Strapless Bra in Heaven & here it is, in full: Reviewed in the United States on January 28, 2020:


Poet Sarah Sarai knows how to make a line zing, grab your attention, shock you a little or a lot, and make you laugh. All in one stanza. That is no small feat. This poet is very tuned in to the idiosyncratic and has something to say about it. Actually, a lot to say. "My mood is London longing for a blue sky. I take the Hudson River as my lover, / the Southwest as my comforter, Mount Shasta as my tomb. Who wouldn’t want to spend millennia in a fine female breast? …” from her book THAT STRAPLESS BRA IN HEAVEN where life IS a train wreck. But Sarai gets past all that with other train wrecks, from other lives, from history, near and far, from myths and legends, from the wake-up call of a weary friend: “One morning he pulled me aside, to advise I never check myself into Bellevue.” This is poetry on acid with a twist of real. You have to be wide open to rap lines the way Sarai does. The book is lyrical, musical, unforgiving. I’m not suggesting this poet is heartless. Not by any stretch. She just keeps the soft and mushy under wraps, giving us a peek, here and there. Because she’s an original. Very highly recommended.



Susan Tepper is author of, most recently, the novel 
What Drives Men (Wilderness House).

photo: The East River. Taken by Sarah Sarai.



Thursday, January 23, 2020

Peril #52 of Having a Mother #poem #Stonewall #mothers #sex


Peril #52 of Having a Mother


Alois talked up
fastidious habits he
observed while engaged
in love's excitations.
Bus drivers on Haight
were clued in, shop clerks,
everyone in a radius knew
his pride of ownership.

I wish Mom talked sex
as much as he did.
I know lots about travels of the spirit.
I'm sort of mental.

May I take off my clothes.
That’s a prayer.
May I take off my clothes,
roll about and know the cloud of unknowing.
Sweetie, it wants to be known, don’t you think?


Sarah Sarai. Stonewalls' Legacy: A Poetry Anthology. Hidden Gems Press., Ed. Rusty Rose & Marc Rosen. 2019.

Friday, January 17, 2020

“Darwinian Arguments for the Quick Grab" #poem


On the Shelving Cart

“Pictorial Archive of Female Touch”
“Freud’s How-To: Volume IX 
            of the Academy of Futile Investigations”
“Library of Geological Curiosity:  Female Orgasm 
            Challenges to the Richter Scale”
“Proceedings of the Society for Sensual Revelation”
“Darwinian Arguments for the Quick Grab”
“Theoretical Orgasm: A Position Paper”
“Real Deal Orgasm: Authentications”
“Paradigms of Necessary Ecstasy”
“Tendencies to Colonize the Cunt”
“No Longer that Rare Rapture: 
            An Expository Essay”
“Inner Thigh Love in the Early Middle Ages”
“Your Porous Skin So Hungry”
“Mechanical Schemata for Quickies”
“Rounded Hip on Rounded Hip: 
            A Cartographer’s Dream” 
“Universal Primer on Teaching Touch”
 “Finger-probing Vaginal Regions and 
            Other Investigatory Bliss”
 “Stately Pleasure Domes”
“Love’s Globalization: Sacred Texts on 
            Orgasm as Universal Verity”
“Venture Capitalism: Artifact of 
            Nothing in Contrast to Women Sighing”
“American Medical Association’s
            Acknowledgement of the Embodied 
            Ache for Pleasure”
“The Atlas of Female and Non-binary 
            Explorations in a New World”
“American Medical Association
            Addendum:  Immeasurable 
            Possibilities of Gratification”
“I Married a Vagina: An Inside Story” 
“Big: America Awakens”
“Expansionists Praise Ample Regions of Flesh”
“Vag on Vag: We Happy”
 ___
Sarah Sarai. Sinister Wisdom: The Lesbian Body Issue, Fall 2017

Saturday, January 4, 2020

if you suffer sensitivity to shellfish, fishy smells, fish scales . . .

Bajo Manhattan Block Set, Maisonette.com


Do Not Take This Medication . . .


If you are prone to choking, choke when prone, 
smell gas, pass gas, are gas lit in the gaslight 
of a dark night; suffer sensitivity to shellfish, 
fishy smells, fish scales, practicing scales, 
scaling a climb-wall, toy towns built to scale, 
that youth who can’t come out of their shell, 
oh, that’s you; if you are allergic to all-beef patties, 
Peppermint Patty, Patty Hearst, an Irishman 
named Paddy, Patty Duke, the Patty Duke of Earl, 
duking it out with some schmuck. Do not take 
This Medication if allergic to flu shots, recently flew, 
fear wearable software with a virus. Do no use 
software at the dinner table. Only flatware.

Sarah Sarai, First Literary Review East, Nov. 2019