“Nan” © Lance Ward

 

Not Me, It Cries

My past doesn’t haunt me.
I haunt my past.
In the middle of the night it jerks ‘wake.
“Shit. Now what’re you gonna blame me for!”
Spots my darkened eye,
my smile a loop, a cache of memories
tooling outskirts of best times ever,
gone days, manic when manic
was friends who could spot
a grand weirdness of bravery,
originality manifested.
Youth is now cringe-worthy.
“I don’t know why that’s gone,”
my past cries, confused
about age’s clarity.

 

Sarah Sarai’s poetry has been published in a variety of journals including Zocalo Public Square, Barrow Street, Prelude, Posit, The Southampton Review, and others. Her poetry collections are That Strapless Bra in Heaven, Geographies of Soul and Taffeta, and The Future Is Happy. She lives in New York City and works as an independent editor.

Lance Ward is an award winning artist/writer (Blood and Drugs; Flop Sweat) but is also a painter of strange art.