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).

"the need to kill various elves" :Spencer Dew reviews my collection: #poetry

Spencer Dew is impressive. His review in decomP magazinE of my collection, Geographies of Soul and Taffeta, is no doubt the least of his accomplishments but in my life, the most important. His summations are the very “wry” he assigns me, and brilliantly so. I will let you read the review for yourself, and hope you will buy and read the book, as well. See below for links. 

Here is a taste of both book and review. “Rolling on the Floor Killing Elves,” begins with an apparition of discord: 

The elves, the freaking elves.    
They laugh at huge clumsy humans.
Big hands, big feet, and have you seen
our big bent stinky shoes! . . .

Spencer Dew sees the poem's link to the other poems in the book -  so gratifying to the poet - when he sums up by use of a few of my lines thusly: 

“It doesn't take brains, this thing called happiness,” but that doesn't make it any less elusive in a world of distractions, represented here by forks in mattresses, the underserved fame of snake, and the need to kill various elves. “When Trouble farts, you can smell it,” Sarai writes.

“...the need to kill various elves.” Who among us has not known that?   

Read the review, in decomP magazineE.
Buy Geographies, published by Indolent Books.
Check out Spencer Dew, Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Centenary College of Louisiana, currently researching the Moorish Science Temple of American, and author of Songs of Insurgency; Here Is How It Happens; Learning for Revolution: The Work of Kathy Acker; and other books.

Tepper Talk: Susan Tepper Interviews Sarah Sarai

***
Berndnaut Smilde

***
Berndnaut Smilde

Tepper Talk:

Susan Tepper writes fiction, poetry, interviews, runs readings, posts indefatigably. I was lucky enough to be interviewed by her in late 2016 about Geographies. Here is an excerpt:

In your poem ‘But Then Again’ you also bring up God:
 “… You suspect God’s an / anarchist and admit you / like belief which transforms / you into an arcangel, a / nimbus, the celebrating / Sun. /…”
 Will you talk some about this poem?
 S.S. If anyone wants to read ‘But Then Again’ which was published in Ascent here is the direct link. God? She’s a pretty common character in literature. No reaching deep into classical references there. I had a “moment” late one morning at the Center (LGBT) on 13th Street, in one of their spacious, high-ceilinged rooms with many large windows. The sun poured in through the glass and found me, and I was unable to differentiate between the very real corporeal Sarah Sarai and a self who was a character in a painting by a Renaissance artist, maybe Raphael, of a woman, holy or not, in a nimbus – those luminous clouds engulfing the saints in art. I inwardly narrated the moment, as when Annie Hall steps out of her body to narrate sex. So I felt anointed and was aware I was no more, no less than Sarah Sarai feeling anointed, or being anointed, or imagining myself in a painting at the Met. It stuck with me, that quick and glorious flash-bulb moment. I used it in a poem.

The full interview is here.

***The photos, from a "nimbus photography series," are by Dutch artist Berndnaut Smilde. "For his Nimbus photography series, Smilde has created indoor clouds within buildings including the Hotel MariaKapel in the Netherlands and Aspremont-Lynden Castle in Belgium. Smilde's clouds were listed by TIME Magazine as one of the top 10 inventions of 2012."

The Crew Is Restless and I Am Sick at Heart: a poem

When I smoked (not much), it was Erik little cigars, but not menthol. I bought them at a smoke shop near Baruch College; I discovered them in Amish Country in New Jersey. Visiting with friends who chose to shop the outlet malls, I wanted to walk in the countryside. An Amish farmer sold me my first Eriks. Everyone forms their own resistance movement?


The Crew Is Restless and I Am Sick at Heart

Had to form my own resistance movement.

Had to write, I have good feelings

     about the journey but fear battles with myself.

Had to work black felt to a beret.

Had to suck cinders into swampy bellow.

Had to buy Erik Little Cigars

     from an Amish farmer.

Had to be surprised.

Had to find them on Twenty-Third and Third.

Had to quit.

Had to just had to envision BBC kings

     fighting brother France

     on green-island fields,

     hear hoofbeats of scythed Mongols

     thunder on the steppes.

Had to smile because there is a field

     in battlefield.
But of course there is also a battle. 

________

by Sarah Sarai. @@@ From the journal, Lyre Lyre. #5, 2013. The site is no longer live, and included in the collection Geographies of Soul and Taffeta (Indolent Books), 2016.

"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.