Sarah Sarai


Three Poems

My Understanding

of the Middle Ages

Not even nine-year-old

            boys

made fart noises

in the   presence of      the Lord.

It Is the Body that Gives Us Away

            Prepare for the moon ship journey

                                                             Sun Ra

And while others prefer       a solitude of the rack   by the doorway           It is not

            and they wish to be out fully                             to so publicly be        The 

gigantic character cannot live as other              than herself     you will agree someday

Without a container     where are freedoms safe   Great respect for 

old-time fags   Youngs!  Do you even know?  What to grab when you take off

        Another century   We will see her as she was             It is the body that gives us 

away         A female body is a fact     flesh its fortune    fate      Oh but             skin 

Sandra Bernhard in The King of Comedy   I want to be Black  < the desperation

of my race>             The messengers are free of degradation  >>>Churches are 

burning in the South<<<     Take off, Soul           Problems of bodies are for 

the living              Problems of hell for the living and dead

Still Not, No,                           No

That shit wasn’t easy         They still haven’t      white civil rightsers  moved to the

   Crenshaw District      Samuel who was Peter to    us      Pete to be Pete            

Samuel to be Black     Peter to be       brother-_in-law                    Man,    you were 

twelve                  when that sister married          The actualization of a you

        not-in-sight                                 Being a purist is always a losing thing        an

 imaginary                Nature learns on the job            blueprints mess with us

          Evolution of    the ignorants is                       nowhere really

                         Bullies          bust us open            The hard road turns us into saviors 

             Pete to be Pete                        Sam to be himself        To have a self                        

                   That’s an art  

Sarah Sarai’s work includes The Future Is Happy (BlazeVOX); Geographies of Soul and Taffeta (Indolent Books); Emily Dickinson’s Coconut Face; The Risen Barbie; O You of the Cotton Pajamas (Dusie Kollektiv); I Feel Good (Beard of Bees); and That Strapless Bra in Heaven (Kelsay Books – forthcoming). Her poems are in many journals and anthologies. She is an independent editor in New York City.
 
 
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