Sarah Sarai | A Thousand Deaths

A Thousand Deaths

 

Jack’s in Wisconsin with a girlfriend

whose father is down one cow,

which I become in its death,

the wandering-off cow Jack finds

“out in the woods with its legs sticking /

straight up to the stars.”

Its unborn calf is by its side.

Eight dead cow-legs point out

two escaped cow-souls.

And so I become animal mother

sorrow, my eyes aching and red,

searching night skies.

My legs pointing to the endless.

I am galled by the up and

down of love, a boulder

hard-shouldered every day.

 

Quote from “Thinning the Herd,” I Have No Clue by Jack Wiler (Longshot Press, 1996)

 

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Photo by Amy Holman

Sarah Sarai has published two to three poetry collections, depending on how you reckon, and a bunch of short stories. A native New Yorker, she lives in the big city, where she is an independent editor of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction.

Sarah Sarai | Three Children Are Laughing

Three Children Are Laughing

They fall and float up.
Heaven is deep space, the moon.
They were not issued boots.
They don’t care. They are angels.
They wear taffetas, twinsets,
garlands of sorrow strung on ivory,
eat five grams of Cheerios
every ten years if that is what they
need to count tulips ochers
of the dust we once thought
was all there was to life.


Originally published in Peacock Journal.

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Sarah Sarai’s poems appear in Barrow Street, Prelude, POOL, E-ratio, Zocalo Public Square, Boston Review, and many other journals. Her second full-length collection, That Strapless Bra in Heaven, was published by Kelsay Books. She is an independent editor in New York, where she volunteers teaching manners to pigeons.