Sarah Rosenthal
Witness
You bandaged your eyes so as not
to see your audience yet they saw you.
As did sidewalk and sky. The vowels
see you, each according to their breath.
The chair sees you -- forearm press,
dark waist, thigh. The eyes of others
have a vague idea of you. Clouds see you
entirely as you are and are not.
Shine of a photograph. Voice in the
receiver. Dust sees you, before you
wipe it away.
Now
Tell me stories. How a back
met a sheet, arm became a
snake. Thought lay on hot
pavement like lost homework.
Tell me of a week at sea, a missive
pressed into seaweed, melancholy
mistaken for body. Hesitate
but tell me of stars that can't
do math, the complications
of a meadow, stink of a scene
of slaughter. Tell me impossible
stillness of bodies
amidst the neverending traffic.
Tipperary
She writes so
much better in a bigger
room. Her brows are swans.
Ropes are pinned and
fall down. Extremity
said my
right hand is loss
my left is a rope
pulled taut. And thought
tight and taught.
This goes
to you
in the space between shakers.
Here's my list of
words. Tipperary. Across
from that the
things I can't say.
Sarah Rosenthal says, "My recent work has appeared or is forthcoming in magazines such as Aufgabe, Bird Dog, Shampoo, can we have our ball back?, VeRT, Poetry Salzburg, Tin Lustre Mobile, and Xcp (Cross Cultural Poetics), as well as in anthologies such as hinge (Crack Press, 2002), The Other Side of the Postcard (City Lights, forthcoming), and the Faux Press Bay Area Anthology (Faux Press, forthcoming). My chapbooks include How I Wrote This Story (Margin to Margin, 2001), sitings (a+bend, 2000), and not-chicago (Melodeon, 1998). My interviews with Bay Area writers have appeared in Rain Taxi, Jacket, Alleybeat, and Aufgabe. I am the recipient of the Primavera Fiction Prize and the Leo Litwak Award.
