Poetry by Sarah Sarai

               emilykneeter CC




No One’s in High School These Days

We graduate with contrastive badges,
weirdo girl, prom girl, high i.q.-girl,
neutral girl in the bleachers one row 
behind puffy coat-wearing skinny 
page-girl girl next to goofy boy 
jabbing her car-coat’s loft, pow, 
pow, right index finger, pow pow,
left index finger, lipping You look 
fat in this coat, pow, and neutral girl 
thinking Shut up and skinny page-
girl girl thinking she’ll skip the coat 
next week, nerdy girl, abused girl,
abused girl, abused girl, pot-dealing 
girl, acid-dropping girl, girl who in 
seventy years will be not-so-bitter
girl, immovable past girl, future girl.





Finery in the Aisles

I wish you the gift of letting go.
I wish I remember learning it years ago.
I wish you knew time moves faster than pain
and in the lapse 
memories stretch
so thin we don’t recognize them 
for what they are 
                               (which is)
              the past come begging. 
I wish that were true and nothing’s 
              held but for  
              a grudge that
                               motivates.





I Love Paris in the Springtime and the Paris Climate Agreement Anytime at All   

The sky’s
a sheet billowing.
Use a clothespin.
It serves more purpose  
than no purpose at all.
    
You! Bite the apple of ache!
We each do our part.
I wash my unders by hand.

Life’s a seat filler. 
Night’s counter-culture’s triumph,
culture’s triumph if you can afford tickets.

Dawn cheerleads for new beginnings.
That’s her stripper name, Dawn.

Take if off, take it all off.
(In reference to your clothed soul,
your reluctance to metamorphize into something better.)


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Sarah Sarai's poems have been published in Barrow Street, The Southampton Review, Sinister Wisdom, Mom Egg, DMQ Review, and many other journals. She is author of the poetry collections That Strapless Bra in Heaven, Geographies of Soul and Taffeta, and The Future Is Happy. She lives in New York City.

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