I can’t read his words, but because of the way they justify left and stagger at right I think that the stranger I see every morning at Starbucks might be a poet like me. This much I know from two tables away: He doesn't seem to measure the meter with fingers that count on the… Continue reading A Partner in Poetry?
Author: Sally Sandler
Sally Sandler is a poet, biographer and children's book author.
To the Whale That Swims Beside Me
Your eye's an aperture to the unnamed and far away from its orphaned twin, so what should I choose to receive my appeal— the fathomless one, or the one on the left? Never mind. Daylight has fled like minnows, the white of your eye is a gibbous moon that’s taking in the foolishness of… Continue reading To the Whale That Swims Beside Me
Hand, or Specimen?
Grandma, I just love your veins, touching one protruding on my left hand, watching it sully from side to side. Grandma, your hands are like specimens, my own interpretation. Veins reminiscent of invertebrates in the Natural History Museum— earthworms, centipedes, those that squirm and seek shelter. If a museum object: Left hand, mature female homo sapiens, Caucasus, sepia-colored… Continue reading Hand, or Specimen?
Before I Was Real at the DMV
Was I ever real enough to see a hummingbird hover outside my room certain that it was my mother again enough of a presence for baby lizards to leap from the sidewalk like exclamations startled by the shadow of me to gape at a fallen sycamore leaf big as Goliath’s Philistine hand with all five fingers curled in a… Continue reading Before I Was Real at the DMV
A Young Girl’s Blonde Hair
In sunlight it’s prairie grass rippled by a wind, a meadow rill that tumbles past to yellow’s end. A whisper of secrets shared with cheeks and face, or captured in a braid, her hair crocheted like lace. At night it spills across her brow, frothy champagne bubbling and breathy, now intoxicating. Someday begging to be… Continue reading A Young Girl’s Blonde Hair
Tolerance as Taught by the Redwoods
This ring of redwoods is patient beyond any patience I ever waited for. Patient in peaceful protest against the meanness of time, and with the ground that cringes underneath their roots, the rumble and creak of a weary world. Patient with the roar of civilization they swallow to save us from ourselves, and once absorbed… Continue reading Tolerance as Taught by the Redwoods
Requiem for Australia
And from the darkness, curled up on a chair the girl heard a gunshot from the screen. The mother deer would never more be seen and the girl's youth blew past her like cold air. She cried and gripped tight her sister's arm and gradually her stinging tears would fade, but innocence had also blown… Continue reading Requiem for Australia
On the Altar of a Vote
It began as a hole punched in a page in November, in a garage precinct after waiting in line, shifting our legs, removing our coats and our shared beliefs. The altitude changed when we walked outside as if driveway and street had become a cliff, a chasm across which we'd taken sides— or actually between… Continue reading On the Altar of a Vote
Pear Trees II: Nothing Gold Can Last
Here the leaves were left to stay in shimmers underneath the trees. In mounds of gold brighter than day their autumn simmers on its way to winter's gray finality. The poet: "Nothing gold can stay," and now I see the leaves face down. But all their stems reach up stick straight like small arms raised… Continue reading Pear Trees II: Nothing Gold Can Last
Only in San Diego
it tapped at my memory two-stepped on my brain galloped on the rooftop sprinted down a drain sometimes a calliope other times a train seeped into my nightmare dallied with my dream hammered on the skylight pushed me to a scream until i figured what it was i might be hearing rain then it seemed… Continue reading Only in San Diego