Saint Beauty: a poem

Saint Beauty

In the direct way of the foolish,

St. Francis walked up to a wolf

and said Brother.

It was a generic naming

with Gubbio’s villagers murmuring

mashed potatoes

mashed potatoes

like actors creating scrim in

a Perry Mason juror’s box.

This was not the wolf who dressed

in Granny’s flannel gown and tied on

a nightcap, no, this was Brother Wolf

touching paw to palm:

I’ll be good.

What’s to learn from this story?

Feed all creatures until

claimed by God from Lost & Found?

Goodness is a gamble.

Perry proved beauty is no defense.

The mystery of being is

trumped by the mystery of not-being.

Not-flesh embodied needs flesh,

even that grandmother’s,

toasty in her long flannel gown.

________

by Sarah Sarai. @@@ From the journal, Lyre Lyre. #5, 2013. (The site is no longer live.)

Twitter: Join the Fun. Our Precedent-elect Is There. Follow Me!

Hey! I haven't seen y'all on Twitter, lately! Follow me! I am the way. I am the fork in the road. I am the spoonable woman women want to spoon. All that and, more or less, more!

So, every so often I remember I am on Twitter. I go on the hunt,  rack up new friends and new enemies with my political mini-opines. Or quick, ill-advised judgments. Or fun links. Cats! Anyone like cats? Join the fun! Follow me. 

My hair is not unpleasantly poufy or frightening young children with asymmetry; my skin is not orange; I did not blow an INHERITED million-dollar real estate empire in New York City. You gotta admit. THAT took some special skill, Mr. Precedent-elect.

Click!
or
copy 'n paste:
https://twitter.com/SarahSarai

See you soon.

"I've been ridden hard and put away wet." from a July Westhale #poem in Thin Noon

You Can Lead a Horse to Water. Repeat.

                           "I want to say, you're good girls,

                             wanting to leave your names behind like that."

                                            -Louise Glück

I'm a working girl, I'm a girlfriend experience.

I dance incurably damned on stage. I'll tell

you I love you more than the moon, you hang

the moon, I'll shoot the moon.

I'll say I adore you to the moon,

and back, the moon is your fault, I'm moony

over you. I'll say, point me to the moon,

and fly me to it. I'm over the moon.

The truth is I mist my panties with a spray bottle.

I rarely see the sky at night.

I've been ridden hard, and put away wet.

That thing about horses is false.

You can give them salt, and they will take it

willingly. They can't forsake salt.

They lick it until they blister, and then

they wear it proud, but secret, inside

their mouths.

______

By July Westhale. Published in Thin Noon, an online journal from Brown University. 

"Four Interlaced Horses" from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Persian. Safavid Period, early 17th century.

A beautiful review of my book, Geographies...

Many, many thanks to writer July Westhale for this startlingly intelligent review of my chap/book Geographies of Soul and Taffeta. The review is in Lambda Literary. 

“Her [Sarai's] poems acknowledge the human capacity for boundary—and our inability to come to terms with fallibility. And while the poems speak to intimacies, to a constellation of personal intimacies that do the world a service in being global, they also speak to a state of people in crisis. Of people steering into the sun, unsure how they even got in the car in the first place, and where they’ll go next.”

Thanks to Posit and Susan Lewis (wherein "It Is True and Truth Sometimes Gets Me Published" - quoted above - was published; to Indolent Books and Michael Broder; and to William Johnson for marshalling/editing Lambda Literary. July Westhale is a writer to watch.

...inferno of passions... Jung

A man who has not passed through the inferno of his passions has never overcome them. As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being. Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.  

― C.G. Jung

illustration from The Red Book