New poem: IT IS DIFFERENT IT IS NOT DIFFERENT - #JohnLewis #BrionnaTaylor #blacklivesmatter

Click on the title - "IT IS DIFFERENT IT IS NOT DIFFERENT" or click on

https://newversenews.blogspot.com/2020/07/it-is-different-it-is-not-different.html

for my poem about:

 . John Lewis (rest in peace) 

. Breonna Taylor (rest in peace) 

. The Freedom Riders

 . Black Lives Matter 

EMT and aspiring nurse Breonna Taylor, 26, was shot to death by police in her own home on March 13. In what’s been described as a “botched raid,” officers barged into Taylor’s apartment in Louisville, Kentucky, as she lay sleeping, and fired multiple rounds. 

Repost: Poem: Hockney at Bellevue . . . "the promise of love's eternal blank comfort"

Hockney at Bellevue 

There’s all kinds of ways to 

enter one of 

Hockney’s pools, 

to part the cerulean acrylic, 

become California, 

no longer dream young men 

in radiant absence but 

engage perfections of skin 

and promise of

love eternal’s blank comfort, 

including this way, in winter 

3,000 miles away and 

over a sludge of feta and 

fries, 

indistinct life's landscape 

not thrilled with 

its inability to be simply 

necessary (without 

a pallid cuisine of industrial 

vistas, no inside, no 

 

hospital, no chance to see 

humanity restored by 

experts reconstructing 

pools of human flesh). 

 __________ 

Sarah Sarai, pub. in Parthenon West Review, 2010.

Collected in That Strapless Bra in Heaven (Kelsay Books), 2020.

After and Sometimes . a poem from Stonewalls' Legacy Anthology

art: Ashley deLeon Nicole*

After and Sometimes

Relive those parties where every bottle was uncorked and

passed around and everyone smoked everything, double-

checked each auto’s glove box for at least a Sherman or 

a roach. And you left with exactly the wrong woman who 

was exactly the right one, if only for less than twelve hours. 

And not everyone was anything, not white, employed,

focused. And all had self-righteous halos of wild hair 

imperfect as a precisely imprecise stitch in a Persian rug.

You had fun. We all did. It had become more possible.

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

*Ashley DeLeon Nicole

Art: https://www.thespruce.com/free-birthday-party-games-1356524

This Blog Is in Trouble #poetry

This blog IS in trouble. Whole tabs have become inaccessible, one being "Poetry" in journals and anthologies. As a stopgap, here is a list:

Poems: Online and in Print 

• “Extradition” in What Rough Beast - Covid 19 Edition, 2020

• “Watch Out, Quite Frankly” “Two-story Bldg. on Vernon” “Second Coming of a G-string” The Cafe Review, 2020

• “Patio-speak” DMQ Review, 2020

• “The First Time I Had Sex” The Southampton Review, 2019

• “The Great Mute Who Is Almighty” & “The Shiny You Have Missed” Unbroken Journal, 2019

• “This Poem and Joan Crawford” Ghost City Press, 2019

• “Do Not Take This Medication” First Literary-East, 2019

• “Charming Maxim” Birds Fall Silent in the Mechanical Sea (great weather for media - print, 2019

• “The Pink Yonder” “Peril #52 of Having a Mother” “After and  Sometimes” Stonewall’s Legacy (eds. Marc Rosen and Rita “Rusty” Rose; Local Gems Press), 2019

• “My Understanding of the Middle Ages” “It Is the Body that Gives Us Away” “Still Not, No No” in Otoliths 53, southern autumn 2019

• “In Tragedy Let There Be the Economy” in Quiddity 2019

• “After the Greeks Tippy-Toed Out of a Horse” in SWWIM, 2019

• “My Father Sleeps Rough in His Dreams” and “Complexities Run Interference” in Gone Lawn 32, 2019

• “Souls in the Penalty of Flesh” in Ethel, 2019

• “Prophecy of a G-string” in Six Sentences, 2019

• “Hotting the Spoon” in LIVE!, 2019

• “This Once-in-a-Lifetime Opportunity” and “Please Don't Think I'm Being Disrespectful” in Prelude (print), 2018

• “What an Arroyo Can Do” in Zocalo Public Square, 2018

• “True Grit” “The Reversible Lobotomy of Confusion” and “No One Asks” in ISACOUSTIC, 2018

• “Who Punched the Banana!” in Golden Walkman, 2018 (Read by Peter Urkowitz)

• “Keeping It Holy” and “Embalmed” in Queen Mob's Tea House, 2017

• “Not Simple is Joy Nor Cosmology” in Like a Fat Gold Watch: Meditations on Sylvia Plath (ed. Christine Hamm), a 2017 anthology which can be purchased HERE

• “Corpses and Cats” in Oddball Magazine, Fall 2017

• “2.” “Science and Change” “By Any” “Six Aunts Wobbling” “And the Ships Set Off” in Vending Machine Press, Fall 2017

• “On the Shelving Cart” and “Hatred Is a Death Threat” in Sinister Wisdom, The Lesbian Body issue, Fall 2017

• “So the World” and “On Being Patronized” in Susan the Journal, 2017

• “Wish Me Luck” in Prelude. 2017

• “Motherhood” in No, Dear Magazine (Republic issue). 2017

• “The Short Lapse of It” and “Let's See if I Have This Right” in Barrow Street, Fall/Winter 2016

• “Three Children Are Laughing“ in Peacock Journal, October 2016

• “Anyway” in Painted Bride Quarterly, Spring 2016

• “I was much too far out all my life“ in The Collagist, November 2015

• “We Knew How“ in decomP magazineE, August 2015

• 

• 
  

• “Grief Is a Crouton” in Before Passing (great weather for MEDIA's 2015 anthology - print)

• “Further Arguments.” First published in Minnesota Review Spring 2007, republished in Thank You for Swallowing, on Bastille Day, 2015 

• “(Marc Jacobs to the West Village)“ and “As She Crosses“ in Other Rooms Press's Summer 2015 issue, Oracular Radioactivation.

• “Practical“ in HIV Here and Now, June 2015

• “It Is True and Truth Sometimes Gets Me Published” “Popular Mechanics” and “White Tunnel” and the Night Return“ Posit, April 2014

• “Early Jazz” Wallace Stevens Journal, 2014 Here is the poem on Project MUSE.

• “Misunderstood Ghost Life” and “Minnesota Multiple Personality Inventory” Yew, February 2014

• “Time Passes and Fails” and “Inheritance” Thrush, 2014

• “Anxieties” Fairy Tale Review (Emerald Issue) 2014

• “But Then Again” Ascent, 2013

•  ”Your Fragile Neck so Vulnerable” Truck (driven by Alexander Cigale), November 2013 

• “Salvation” Ping-Pong Journal (Henry Miller Memorial Library), 2013

•  “I Feel Good”  a Beard of Bees online chapbook, 2013

• “Andy Warhol Left Those Parties by Midnight” and “Thank You, Cashier” The Writing Disorder, Fall 2013 

• “The Common Ancestor, Chrysanthemum Edition” Boog City, 2013

• “The Crew Is Restless and I Am Sick at Heart” & “Saint Beauty” Lyre Lyre #5 2013

• “Prospective Saint With the Christ Child” and “Confused Words” Emily Dickinson's Coconut Face (Dusie Kollektiv) and republished at jbdrecords blog

• “Antiseptics” Dressing Room Poetry Journal, #2, 2013

• “Eyre” Angle Journal of Poetry in English, #4, 2013

• “We Are Jack Kerouac“ Empty Mirror, magazine of the arts, 2012 (f

• “Go Figure“ Journal of Compressed Creative Arts, 10.1.2012

• “A Legend with Usual Cruelties” Saint Katherine Review, 2012

• “Marilyn Hacker” “Faith & Practice” “Sneaking Around the Multiplex.” West Wind Review, 2012 

• “Fabian Avenarius (Arthur Craven)” Cordite Poetry Review, 39, 2012

• “This Way and That” Lavender Review. Issue 5, 2012

• “Drink, Child” “Stop” “Palace of the Blessed”  Folly Magazine. 2012. O/P.

• “Blame It on Family” Redheaded Stepchild (nominated for a Best of the Net) 2012

• “Long Ago” 200 New Mexico Poems. 2012 

• “I Resolve” and “Two Dreams Hovering Insect Wings Above Me.” Truck: Resolution/Revolution. 2012

• “In the Bakery,” “Wild Egress,” “After the Plague Years” in Reconfigurations: A Journey for Poetry & Poetics / Literature & Culture, 2011

• “Commerce for the Good of the Peoples,” “You Are the Confusing Identity I Write For” and “On the Way to the Gallery“ in POOL Poetry, Issue 10, 2011

• 

• “From Love, Imagination“ Boston Review July/August 2011 

• “So Tender Beauty“ Boston ReviewJuly/August 2011

• “No Need for a Door“ and “Look Now“ in Scythe VI, 2011

• “One Day a Year You Can Take Something Home from the Met“ and “Inquisition“ EOAGH 2011

• “A Territory of the Miracle,” “We're always in a room.” and “A Bullish Run Into Chambers” in Fringe, March 2011 

• “Black People Are on My Mind These Days” Mary: A Literary Quarterly. Spring/Summer 2011

• “Hockney at Bellevue” Parthenon West (Issue 7), 2011

• “In Denzel Washington's Gaze” “The Blood of Billy Bob Thornton” Sprung Formal (Kansas City Art Institute) 2010 or 2011

• “Are the Roses Doing Nothing” “Our Pointillist Galaxy”  Reconfigurations 2010

• “Front Yard (I Have No Mythology)” FRiGG Spring 2010 

• “Longing for a Blue Sky” Lavender 2010

• “Like Wings“ Redheaded Stepchild (nominated for a Pushcart & a Best of the Web) 2010

• “Holy Minimalism“ Red Fez, 2009

• “I’m Never Worried About What I’m Worried About” Fifth Wednesday Journal, Spring 2009

• 

• “And What If“ Willows Wept Review Spring 2009

• “Experiential Philosophy“ Fogged Clarity 2009

• “It Was Like You Walked into a Tavern in the Great Northwest” Big City Lit. 2008

• “This Flesh Divine” Numinous 2008

• “Something's Falling” Threepenny Review 2008

• “Ask Your Questions Only When the Bus Stops. Drivers Need to Concentrate on the Road.” and “All Along Our Way” Pank #2, 2008

• “What I Choose To Remind You” Juice: A Journal of the Ordinary 2008 

• “hAve You Been Married the Sister asK” Three Rooms Press 2008

• “Incorporeal” “Remorse” “Birth Is the Last Exit” Terrain.org No. 22 Summer/Fall 2008

• “Further Arguments” Minnesota Review Spring 2007

• “Aristotle” Tipton Poetry Journal 2007

• “Super Bowl Sunday, 1995“ and ”From the Dome of the Willing Firmament“ FRiGG: A Magazine of Fiction and Poetry Fall 2000

• “Emily Dickinson Is Jewish” Fine Madness 1998

• “First Appearance of the Angel Evelyn” ZYZZYVA, 1995

One Off
“Emily Dickinson Is Jewish” was first published in 1998 in Fine Madness. In 2009 the poem was presented at the conference “Witnessing Responses: A New Generation's Perspectives on the Holocaust,” at Károli Gáspár University, Budapest. Read a version of Ester Rizmar's paper. 

• “Not Simple Is Joy nor Cosmology” Like a Fat Gold Watch, an anthology of work responding to Sylvia Plath (ed. Christine Hamm; FGW Press), 2017.

• “Beyond Reach“ in Transition: Poems in the Aftermath, an anthology forthcoming from Indolent Books, 2017.

• “From Love, Imagination” reprinted in Composing Poetry: A Guide to Writing Poems and Thinking Lyrically (ed. Gerry LaFemina; Kendall-Hunt) 2016.

• Gathered: Contemporary Quaker Poetry, Nick McRae, ed. Sundress Publications, 2013.

• Shadows of the Future: an Otherstream Anthology, ed. Marc Vincenz, 2013 (online pdf).

• “Era of the There” and “Life and Times of Ancestor Man” The OR Panthology: Ocellus Reseau, ed. Ed Go, Other Rooms Press, 2013. 

• “The Rebirth Live.” Say It Loud: Poems About James Brown. Mary E. Weems, Ph.D. and Michael Oatman, M.F.A. eds. Whirlwind Press. 2011

• “Pasted and Cut.” Maintenant 6. New York. 2011

• “Brittle of Bark, but Lovely.” you say. say. Uphook Press. New York, NY. 2009

WE KNEW HOW #poem We waited for our laptops to recognize our sovereignty. Were comforted by a lavender mist ... #decomp #SarahSarai

"We Knew How" was published in decomP magazinE, August 2015.
And in Geographies of Soul and Taffeta (Indolent Books).

poems that dance on a faultline... @Mistress_Tweet on That Strapless Bra in Heaven ...Mary Meriam-reviews #poems

The most esteemed and lovely Mary Meriam, editor and founder of 

Lavender literary journal, and founder/publisher at Headmistress Press, 

kindly posted this review of my new collection,

That Strapless Bra in Heaven, on Amazon. 

Thank you, Mary, although I'm really not erudite. I simply remember

books I read in college. 

 Mary Meriam

 5.0 out of 5 stars

 dazzling, intellectual, brave

 Reviewed in the United States on February 9, 2020

 Mary Meriam

 5.0 out of 5 stars dazzling, intellectual, brave

 Reviewed in the United States on February 9, 2020

 Sarah Sarai throws her balls of erudition in the air and juggles them into poems

 that dance on a faultline between frolic and rage. What does

 “that strapless bra in heaven” represent? It’s a subversive, underwire, 

 feminist image: breasts free of straps, comfortably supported, 

 floating like angels. It’s also a lesbian image: a symbol of 

 pink and lacy bliss. “Who wouldn’t want to spend millennia 

 / in a fine female breast?” Sarai asks queer questions and 

 answers them in a dazzling milieu of her own creation. 

 No one writes like Sarah Sarai.

Like That Strapless Bra! @ https://www.facebook.com/thatstraplessbra/ #poems #poetrycollection

Like the Page! On Facebook!
Stay in touch!

That Strapless Bra in Heaven (Kelsay Books) is Sarah Sarai's third book and second full-length poetry collection. Click on the link to order. $14! 

The Facebook page includes:

• A complete list of poem titles!
• Comments, as they come in, from reviewers!
• An exciting guide on how to order your very own a copy of THAT STRAPLESS BRA IN HEAVEN!
• With links! and price breakdown! ($14 +shipping)!
• Welcome to the blurbs!

Poems in Strapless were first published in Prelude, Boston Review, Posit, Ethel, Barrow Street, Zocalo Public Square, Oddball, Birds Fall Silent in the Mechanical Sea, Quiddity, Isacoustic, SWWiM, and many other fine journals.

Relive those parties where every bottle was uncorked... "After and Sometimes" #poem

After and Sometimes

Relive those parties where every bottle was uncorked and

passed around and everyone smoked everything, double-

checked each auto’s glove box for at least a Sherman or 

a roach. And you left with exactly the wrong woman who 

was exactly the right one, if only for less than twelve hours. 

And not everyone was anything, not white, employed,

focused. And all had self-righteous halos of wild hair 

imperfect as a precisely imprecise stitch in a Persian rug.

You had fun. We all did. It had become more possible.

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

Random photo. Sarah Sarai. Madison Square Park.

"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.

The Amazon path to That Strapless Bra in Heaven, poems by Sarah Sarai.

Or go to Kelsay Books to order your copy of That Strapless Bra in Heaven, 

poems by Sarah Sarai.

Susan Tepper is author of, most recently, the novel 

What Drives Men (Wilderness House).

photo: The East River. Taken by Sarah Sarai.