Poetry by Sara Mae

     SashaW CC




Moon Roof Gothic 

In temporal drag, I press a blade of grass 
to my palm & call backwards. This time I do not 
return but bring that small child out from hiding, 

our voice bouncing off plastic gems, fairy wings, 
a frivolousness where we can hear each other— 
materiality a balm—the distance of a wound 

from end to end & how it puckers—a closed 
distance, an echolocation. 
I had a dream I made myself shiny 

so a crow would fly down & peck at me. 
He tapped my neck like a spigot for 
syrup from bark & I marveled at 

the sensation, a new pulse, a gray 
sky above us. In my bisexual latency--
unless you consider shower thoughts 

a practice of ultrasonic hearing—I think 
only of breathing into each other’s mouths, 
my melodrama my sexual fantasy--

me the window & you the condensation, 
you the chimney & me sky catching smoke. 
I shed my Victorian collar for icebox skin, 

fruit bat gossip. Collection of blue butterflies 
& baby teeth—how I call on the self who was 
afraid to want, who slept in a closet 

& woke up to a figure the shape of purple 
television static, the one scared of hallways, 
the sound of the bath running, the way a house 

articulates itself--
the triangulation of my desires--
the shape of a roof.

​



Exquisite Corpse as Recurring Dream 

to be fuckable is to be 
of linearity
                               lipstick left      to right 
                                              letters stuffed with violets 
                                                            then spit

linearity             my fidelity
                              bouquets like salt over the shoulder
                                              walking the aisle in chronological order

                              but I was a backwards angel
                                              I stayed with you          my sleep paralysis 
returned         
                 shoehorned wife        
sickle                knife 
                                              nights I woke up crying 

                 who was the succubus           did I become her
                           myoclonic               jerk                    before dreams 
what sent me to sleep 
                                                                           what did she smell like in this bed 
                                                                           where you brought me sesame cookies 

                  if I was the monster     
                  if I am                 show me my seams 

I wore my best hope that summer 
                even madonnas perch on serpents 
                                                magnolias let loose from their faucets 
                                                               calves in the newspaper of a day’s outfits 

To be fuckable means to be cherubic ad nauseum 
                              I was an angel wrung dry
                                                               an open mouth

& linearity demands closure    

                                              if my heart could have thrown back its curtains 
but to let you go            would be an infidelity                                tell me 

                                                                             what did she smell like in this bed 
                                                                             where you brought me sesame cookies

​



Cross My Heart & Hold a Stake

Once, I wrote a love poem that ended if you hold a wind chime 
close enough it stops making a sound, then remained silent about 

my desires for years. When I perform for people on stage, through
the dressing screen of the page, do I want to be holy & untouchable? 

To make myself ambiguous would be to turn myself monstrous. 
But I distrust myself & the audience too much to stay here long. 

I keep an eye trained to the door, haunted by my younger, beaming 
self, sometimes begging to be made only a mouth, sometimes 

tripping through onion grass, fleeing another’s desire. A little 
red corn syrup, a little lip liner & I become a citrus wheel 

on the hook of a hip of a tall glass of beer. Stuck in the teeth of readers. 
The color of blood & dripping. My desire is to stop my intrusive thoughts 

around paring knives, around how I would be looked at when help arrives 
& I’ve already gone through with it. My desire is to lay alone in a garden 

& let devil’s trumpet grow over me, to pulse open with the moonrise, 
to be told when to cum by the sky. My desire is to be forgotten 

so that I might become somebody’s precious secret, a message in maple tree 
bark, the first violets thawing out the zodiac, something undeniable & small. 

My desire is to open someone like a green apple with my hands, 
touch their seeds & taste their arsenic. My desire is to use T gel as if 

it were spit & grow something glinting from where I split. If there is 
a vampire waiting for me along this path I am walking, I am already 

his teeth & the stake that can turn him to sand. I am already his cold skin 
like October air I press myself to, to remind me I am alive. I am already 

his thirst & his bursting smile. I am smiling as I twist the stake in, 
the wood like something a tomato plant could build itself around.




​
Palinode for the Exquisite Corpses

Like Gram’s knuckles in her straightened
hands carrying a pie dish from beneath, undoing 
the bramble of a fist, like her flat palms tucking
pie dough over berries as into an envelope,
like coming out of sleep paralysis and righting
the fish hook of my spine, my forehead
swept clean of nightmare sheen, I am 
smoothing out the story for you now. I wanted 
to close the distance between my queerness 
& my family, so I wrote accordion poems, 
folded poems, that I could fold my selves in 
from end to end, understand them to be closer 
together. (Think knapsack, where the corners 
meet in a knot. Think forbidden love letters 
between Gram and Grampa, their 65 year-
old folds & thornbush cursive, forbidden
because I wasn’t supposed to read them.)

The poet who told me to start writing poetry
said, griefs braid together. When Gram
died, my mom snuck the love letters to me,
& a napkin, on which Gram had blotted
her lipstick. It is not enough to tell the story
by doing my lipstick like her. She used to 
ask me to brush her hair in church, in the pews,
& she’d close her eyes, listening to mass.
It’s just that when I unbraid the poems, 
none of it makes sense. & so how will I live?




​Sara Mae is a high fem writer raised on the Chesapeake Bay. Their work speaks to queerness, the surreal, the uncanny, body horror, and intimacy. They are a 2023 Big Ears Music Festival Artist Scholar and a 2022 Tinhouse Summer Workshops alum. They were a finalist for the 2023 Loraine Williams Prize and their work appears in or is forthcoming from FENCE, Waxwing, The Offing, and elsewhere. Their chapbook, Phantasmagossip, is forthcoming from YesYes Books and was the winner of the 2023 Vinyl45 Chapbook Series. They write shimmery rock music as The Noisy. They received their MFA from UT Knoxville.