Are You Tired of Hanging Out with the High-minded & Moral? Then Come to the Other Rooms Reading, 7/21..STARRING Sapphire!

Many apologies to the great Sapphire, poet and genius and moralist and probably the most fun of the lot. Certainly the prettiest.

Them's what I had in mind when writing that title are the two Other Rooms Press instigators, Ed Go and Mike Whalen. Indeed I suspect they left me as the last reader because they figured I'd be so wearied by that point, in the afternoon, I'd buy them a drink. Nice try.

Melissa Christine Goodrum is the editor of The Or Panthology: Ocellus Reseau, which this reading celebrates. We like her. Please join us, SUNDAY, July 21, at t.b.d. bar, 224 Franklin Street in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.

Era of the There: when dragons were mapped & Great Goddess had mercy (a poem)

Arhats (holy men) Ding Yunpeng. Ming dynasty, 1368 – 1644 B.C.E. Shanghai Museum

Era of the There

One day you stepped off an edge.

Dragons nipped your toes.

Which grew back.

Those were different times.

Your daughter sailed toward There.

She puzzled.

You know how it blushes at

end of light?

Feet flip flopped a cover-

let over turtle-back and loam.

Stilt birds strutted.

You serenaded valleys lying
long on their backs, hands

behind head making of clover-

arms foothills.

Those were different times.

As far as eye could see

greeny willow-leaning and
un-ladle-able soup of alligator-scale. 

Paddle too far and be — like that!

in an instant! all of you! in a gullet

gulped gone — gracefully — 

to not forever flail in the dark

coppery cauldron of mystery.
Oh, even then Great Goddess had
mercy on our miserable lives.

[by Sarah Sarai] [published in Ocellus Reseau: The OR Panthology, 2013] [thanks to Other Rooms Press]