Sarah Sarai, “Our Pointillist Galaxy”

Author: Poetry Editor

May 14, 2012

Today, two poems by Sarah Sarai.

WHITE PEOPLE ARE ON MY MIND THESE DAYS

We are going to disappear.
I say good riddance though
I’ll miss myself.
Robert said Well what culture do they have.
The next day my answer.
Uh, the novels of Thomas Hardy,
farmers bent by winds off the Channel?

Do the dying move on with grace,
knowing there’s new life and they’re part of it
no matter?

Some hit the dirt oblivious to
lights strung up in the tunnel.
This is personal but what isn’t.

Explorers were curious gold.
Conquistadors filed teeth for blood.
I can’t figure out history.

I said we were on the way out and Robert’s
Robert said Don’t worry, we’ll cause more damage
before we’re gone.

My great-nephew promised to be kind,
as he looked into my eyes and
spotted the loving goddess, clawing to get out.

OUR POINTILLIST GALAXY

Throw myth and a caution to the midnight sapphire,
light the stuck fires to warm goddesses and their rapists.
In our sky, women not ignored.

Make the velvet town square an eternal reckoning
(a way to find your way).
Mars raped Rhea Silvia (well that’s that)
(that’s Romulus and Remus).
The West was born into crime.

Legend’s old as lust, doomed as
pride embedded in our helix vining up a trellis, tra-la.
Elevation’s for a few good women and
holies and what a word it is
strolling our red carpet tongues.
We overly love standard bearers
and our gestures not enough.
Every achievement is against the odds.
Oh my and tra-la.
Detail unambiguities of venality.
Set it right. We’re feral. No one’s perfect.
_____Look up, up.

——

SARAH SARAI writes poetry and fiction. Her poetry collection, The Future Is Happy, was published by BlazeVOX [books], with poems in Boston Review, POOL, Lavender and others, and anthologized in Say It Loud: Poems About James Brown (Whirlwind Press). For links to her poems and fiction visit My 3,000 Loving Arms. She lives in New York.

“White People Are on my Mind These Days” first appeared in Mary: A Literary Quarterly; “Our Pointillist Galaxy” in Reconfigurations. Both appear here with permission.