Two Poems by Sarah Sala

POEM AFTER MAN:
KITCHEN TABLE

1.
I thought here’s a man who owns who he is.
Look how natural you move in your animal skin.

2.
Paraffin wax burns at a steady rate of 0.1 g/min, releasing roughly 80 watts.
Low light, we touched each others’ faces and shoulders, softened into the quilt.
A dark-furred skyscraper loomed at the window, waiting to be let in to sleep alongside his masters.

4.
My mother //laughs// interrupts everything to unbottle hilarity.
You like him as much as a kitchen table?

3.
If we married/ I would decade you/ in the kitchen/ our children’s bright specs/ traces of stray crayon/ adorn/ your spalted grooves/ stay while the baby/ sleeps with you cheek/ to cheek/ pendant dreams of the bluegrey seas/ we were born to planet earth/ and to our mothers/ and grew from seed.

10.
“I apologize if you thought this was some kind of trajectory,” she said
“Maple,” he said.

11.

I took                                  Mozart                                              I would gladly
a record                             based his                                          surrender
player                                 master                                              a thousand years
needle                                pieces
to your                               on                                                      Rooted
tree                                     broken
rings                                   chords and arpeggios                   in place

It played                             We                                                    eyeless
an                                        can’t be
alberti                                 far off                                               mute
bass                                    wanting a song that

Bright                                  wont                                                de-eared
pluck of                              wind
rain                                      down                                               waiting
on a
loved one                         //oh my love
walking                                                                                        For the beloved.
from                                  The sounds of our spring
the carport                      together, the tress were listening

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UNTRACEABLE

The last thing you said to me
was if you do this, I’ll never speak
to you again. Until today, I could imagine
your life. Now my thoughts occur in careful,
calculated measure. Late afternoon naps
at my desk chair, head tilted back, it’s safe
to conjure your bright smile. As if somehow
by focusing on a tooth, I cannot be torn by it.
I remember your body, politely. Chaste praise
of the curve of your buttock rounding into thigh.
Idiot memory, mine, it’s no longer my right to chronicle.
Yet the dark nettles of your frankness have softened
into daydreams of old care packages.
Is this how love ends? A gradual
retirement of the lead hammer
dug into a trench in the seashore.
I say love never leaves us completely.
I say, in gratitude of this life,
I wish a thousand kindnesses on you.
Untraceable, back to me.

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about the author:

Sarah Sala is a graduate of New York University’s MFA program, and she lives in Manhattan. Her latest chapbook is forthcoming from Dory Press Spring 2015, and poems from “Poetry Ireland Review,” “All Hollow,” “Leveler,” and “Atlas Review.”

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