Sarah Sarai's Blog

Per your request I am listing a few ways to purchase my poetry collections from the comfort of your home. - Apologies. Some of the architecture of the website is showing here which shouldn't. Sigh.If you are like me, you are pretty sure you alrady know how to do so, then get confused. These are confusing times, friends.
So. Most of my collections - The Future Is Happy (BlazeVOXBooks) - Geographies of Soul and Taffeta (Indolent Books) - That Strapless Bra in Heaven (Kelsay Books) - and Bright-Eyed (Poets Wear Prada) are available on Amazon. Click here.
Bookshop is currently carrying two of my books - Geographies of Soul and Taffeta (Indolent Books) and Bright-Eyed (Poets Wear Prada). The advantage there is that a bit of the monies go to a bookstore of your choice.
Today is September 8, 2025. Things are changing all the time. Leave a comment if you have trouble finding the websites. And remember. WHEN IN DESPAIR , Google: Sarah Sarai + Amazon + Bright-Eyed

Friends: I compiled an up-to-date list of reviews of Bright-Eyed (Poets Wear Prada/2024).   Rain Taxi . REVIEW by Jim Feast: links to an Instagram post  The Writing Disorder . REVIEW by Ed Go
MER/Mom Egg Review . REVIEW by Jordan E. Franklin. 

Compulsive Reader. REVIEW by Charles Rammelkamp

Tears in the Fence. REVIEW by John Brantingham

Necromancy Never Pays. REVIEW by Jeanne Griggs

Thanks always and ever to Roxanne Hoffman and Jack Cooper, publishers, Poets Wear Prada (Hoboken, New Jersey and Paris, France).  Sarah Sarai, 2010, or so.   Sarah Sarai, 2023, with Stacy's Daughter, in L.A.
Sarah Sarai, Needing No Explanation, 2022
Conjunction Sam, the Patron Saint of Editors
Sarah and Alice. Vermont.
PurCHasE! Go to seller of your choice, including: 

Amazon 
Bookshop
Abe Books

BRIGHT-EYED is now available on Amazon. 



from the back cover: 

Bright-Eyed, Sarah Sarai’s deliciously quirky excursion into her California roots, explores the concept of family and the racial and gender divides that can obscure the basic truths of existence. Danced out into the sun-bleached So Cal heat, these poems dazzle. As the poet says in “Wasted in a Special Way,” It is always good to be young and loaded./Something, somewhere is always good./Something somewhere is always wasted. These poems are terrific. Nothing wasted. Nothing at all. 

 —Alexis Rhone Fancher, author of EROTIC: New & Selected

With Sarah Sarai’s Bright-Eyed, I’m reminded of the Miles Davis idea that music’s not the notes but the attitude of s/he who blows the notes, and Bright Eyes is filled with attitude. It’s a joy-ride through the old neighborhood informed by a vital wit that ranges from Sun Ra to Nietzsche and drops aphorisms the way Hansel and Gretel dropped crumbs – the past doesn’t haunt you/you haunt the past; youth is a superpower; To have a self:/That’s an art; and on and on – reminding us, if we need reminding, that you can’t go home again, but you do anyway.

—Tim Tomlinson, author of This Is Not Happening to You; co-founder, New York Writers’ Workshop

Order here: https://amzn.to/3PM90bH 

BRIGHT-EYED is published by Poets Wear Prada, a press founded in Hoboken and specializing in beautiful paperback books. Roxanne Hoffman is founder and editor-in-chief. Jack Cooper is editor.

About BRIGHT-EYED: These poems reflect this native New Yorker’s family's move to California; growing up on the West Coast—the San Fernando Valley, the Crenshaw District, Echo Park, in the 1960s and 19670s as a preteen, teen, and soon an adult; and her responses to her new surroundings and the times. Several poems explore interracial tension and coexistence from the viewpoint of a young person whose older sister created an interracial family. The poet explores her relationships with her nephew, niece, their children, and her brother-in-law from the perspectives of both family and race. Her insight and wit are reminiscent of the California poet Diane Wakowski and James Broughton.

 

 all by Sarah Sarai 2022 Oct 24

 

Please Include a Short Bio Statement

 

My bed is a living soul.

I change the sheets weekly.

 

When trying to quit

I would smoke a few,

drench the pack, 

tweak out,

dry cigs in the oven,

light up.

The fire that time.

 

No one showing for my funeral,

especially the twittering phobic,

doesn’t faze me.

 

Everyone knowing the twittering

phobic don’t show for my funeral

equally fazes me not.

 

Can I swing retirement in Belize?

Oman’s not working out

as I’d hoped.

 

Speaking abstractly,

penises can be beautiful.

Breasts are the world.

 

 

 

FAMILY SECTION

   Be Holding Dr. J - 

 

Be Aunting

 

I sent my great-nephew

a collection of poems on perfection,

mastery, the work, this whole

being alive thing, being Black

(which I’m not but my nephew is

is and my great-nephew is).

He is in 12th grade. Status schools

have been scouting him for his

brain, big, analytic, mathematical.

The collection is Be Holding.

It is an ode to Dr. J. 

The poet is Ross Gay. 

If you are reading this, Ross Gay,

who I have not met, thank you

for your gift to the all of us.

I hope my great-nephew’s life

is floral and expert and California-

worthy. I want it beautiful

and open, glorious, sure, I’ll take

glorious, in this untrustworthy world.

 

 

 

“split at the root” Adrienne Rich on being half Jewish

Half Christian

 

Big Little Lambs

 

My nephew and niece, 

half-White all-Black, 

don’t care about my divided self, 

my split-at-the-rootness,

Christian blah blah Jewish blah blah.

White + white is two whites

spooning in a pudding of white.

With all respect to my folks.

Hey, I know Black is not 

for sure saintly as most saints 

are not for sure saintly.

But for their time on the rack.

Let’s rest this poem on an oven

rack as if it were lamb led

to dinner, a lamb dripping with

blood, connection, and shame.

This poem is heliocentric as 

the ego basking in itself.

Nephew and niece, they grow,

like we’re said to in California,

sprouting leaf after shiny leaf 

happy as neon or sundrops.

Erin thanked me for the fifty!

Come on. Sing Happy Birthday.

 

 

 

 

No One’s in High School These Days

 

We graduate with contrastive badges,

weirdo girl, prom girl, high i.q.-girl,

neutral girl in the bleachers one row 

behind puffy coat-wearing skinny 

page-girl girl next to goofy boy 

jabbing her car-coat’s loft, pow, 

pow, right index finger, pow pow,

left index finger, lipping You look 

fat in this coat, pow, and neutral girl 

thinking Shut up and skinny page-

girl girl thinking she’ll skip the coat 

next week, nerdy girl, abused girl,

abused girl, abused girl, pot-dealing 

girl, acid-dropping girl, girl who in 

seventy years will be not-so-bitter

girl, immovable past girl, future girl.

 

 

Shock-White

i.

After my mother died from Jesus I left my hair color alone. If it’s just fucking you want, or all you can handle, a decent cut will do.

 

ii.
We laughed, me and her, when she stopped. It was the same faded blond she’d been covering.

 

iii.
Once I quit, my hair prospered gray and white and where you rubbed my nape, auburn, like my locks when California sun baked them red. When I was waiting to be something or someone. And still didn’t realize the woman who was my mother read only that bit of her job description on good shoes and teaching four daughters how to assemble do-it-yourself installations of shame.

 

iv.
In the year of covid-fear all the hairs on my head turned shock-white, all white, only white.

 

v.
Back when Mom was killing herself in the name of Jesus my next oldest sister jumped shock-white. She did that over and over pleading thing, too. Stop, stop, stop. No changing Mom, is what I knew.

 

vi.
Though one time I floated my theory on the limitations of Jesus, who I like outside of church. Mom kept dying.

 

vii.
Volition and a misreading of human possibility. Are the careless and evil winning?

 

 

 

 

How Brilliant Beethoven

If my father believed he needed to arm himself against the insanely damaged carrying rapid-fire to end everyday schoolkids with still-squishy bodies perfecting daffy walks, or teens with their dreams of endless horizons after high school, some part of them knowing life doesn’t give up on its challenge but that youth is a superpower. Well, if my father owned a gun he’d have fumbled opening the safe, shouted at my mom and sisters to be careful as he lifted a lockbox from the safe, trembled working the lockbox and shaken on realizing nothing left to open but a box of bullets and opening that would call the question. He’d have howled there was no locked box in the lockbox in the safe, not that we ever owned a safe or lockbox to lock in it, insisted we were moving back to New York. My mother, who was Christian, would have taken gun and bullets from his twitching hand to load the pistol. She gave birth four times and also could drown mice in the toilet or a pail of water. She would not have shot anyone, would have denied the weapon existed then read Bible and attendant texts while my father, calmed by a shot of whisky, demanded to know if I had read Robert Louis Stevenson yet and if me and my three sisters, each far older than I will ever be, had a clue how brilliant Beethoven was.

 

 

 

 

 

 

great Weather for Media:

 

 

The “Was That Your Sister’s Vagina?” Monologue

 

I’m not judging,

but there’s a vagina on

your sister’s profile.

Likely not your sister’s

vagina but it is a vagina,

winking at whoever 

drifts by, signaling

rest in a storm or

no rest for the stormy.

Maybe statement art

mixed message-y 

yet a necessary reminder:

A vagina is not an

insta-salve for loneliness.

Estranged are the many

from their heartbeat.

Please tell your sister 

about the vagina on 

her profile. Remind her 

to check her settings,

and also that Auntie 

would love to hear 

from her. She didn’t

answer my last email.

 

 

 

 

This Way and That

 

     It was a fairy funeral. [William Blake]

 

On the garden bed of

Blake’s fairy procession

roll this and that, these ways

of midnight pleasure

 

in enchantment and

commonplace wisdom

like don’t touch the fairies,

they’re sensitive.

 

Act within a soul

populated by

sightings and wistful affection,

 

see the filmstrip is at

high-enough speed

life’s fluidity’s felt,

as at the funeral Blake saw,

 

a bodylet laid out on a leaf.

Authentication enough for me

[that fairies exist] I e-mailed you

who reminded me

Blake saw God when he was

 

four. God got down on Her

omni-aching knees

now and then to spy on

William Blake

and could hardly contain Her

 

infinite self, waiting for

the artist to become Heaven and

those paintings to be flashed to

the good and bad alike as proof of

 

the great mystery of vision

even She can’t figure out.

 

 

Adventurous lit journal Pine Hills Review is published at The College of St Rose in Albany, New York. 

Pine Hills Review, "Low Life, Malibu" by Sarah Sarai. 

Dig it. And also, the perfect image.“Lunch Break” by Nicole Monroe. That's what life felt like when I was young and shiftless. 

Check out the PHR submission policies for art and poetry and prose. 

The end. (Sorry to be so brief.)

Adventurous lit journal Pine Hills Review is published at The College of St Rose in Albany, New York. It's all good, which is not meant in that appeasing way "all good" can be misused. "You didn't mean to knock my eye of of it's socket? Don't worry. It's all good."

The binding element of online journals is the visuals. I like to read. I like to read. I like to read what people write. So all of that plus great artwork, culled from the reaches of the web. Or however art is culled these days.

Take a look via the following options:

https://pinehillsreview.com/

Pine Hills Review 

Google "Pine Hills Review" and see what pops up! Most likely it'll be Pine Hills Review, linking to the Pine Hills Review. Or it could be the Pine Hills Review page on Facebook or the assisted-living facility in North Dakota. There are selections galore.

I mention all this because I was going to celebrate my recent Pine Hills Review publication of "Low Life, Malibu" (a poem). Consider it mentioned. In fact I was going to post the poem, but why, when you can simply click. Please do so:

To repeat: Pine Hills Review, "Low Life, Malibu" by Sarah Sarai. 
The perfect match of an image, “Lunch Break,” by Nicole Monroe, pulls it together. (Things are out of control, here.)

When you are sated check out the PHR submission policies for art and poetry and prose. 

Aspen leaves still green but ever fluttery.https://budburst.org/plants/38

Their Every Yellow Leaf

 

Jacinth looks at the pig and 

asks what she did in another lifetime

to be so beautiful. 

Maybe not everyone would see it

but she’s perfect.

I am not everyone. I agree. 

Alice is perfect, 

a hippopotamus made compact. 

I stroke her dark hide and feed her 

fruit cup from breakfast. 

Cauliflower and a toasted bagel. 

Plum jam. 

With the pig, Jacinth 

and I break bread. 

Jacob, who is new to this poem,

buries his cigarette in a late Fall lawn 

to take a call from Quebec. 

In bright sunlight Alice considers

eternally recycling life. Is my guess. 

Jacinth has no interest in me or Jacob 

and praises only the pig, who is complete. 

Is her guess. The heart gets lonely 

some days. Is Jacob’s guess. 

Feeding Alice renders longing and irritation 

irrelevant, without obliterating either. 

Aspens snap their every yellow leaf. 

The trees expected we’d be gone by now. 

Their every yellow leaves don’t guess. 

 

Thank you to the editors of New Ohio Review, 2023 for selecting this poem.

Aspen leaves still green but ever fluttery.https://budburst.org/plants/38

Leaves, Leaves, the Trees Have Leaves

by Sarah Sarai

Jacinth looks at the pig and 
asks what she did in another lifetime 
to be so beautiful. 
Maybe not everyone would see it
but she’s perfect. 
I am not everyone. I agree. 
Alice is perfect, 
a hippopotamus made compact. 
I stroke her dark hide and feed her 
fruit cup from breakfast. 
Cauliflower and a toasted bagel.
Plum jam. 
With the pig, Jacinth and 
I break bread. 
Jacob, who is new to this poem, 
buries his cigarette in a late-fall lawn
to take a call from Quebec.
In bright sunlight Alice considers 
eternally recycling life. Is my guess.
Jacinth has no interest in me or Jacob
and praises only the pig, who is complete. 
Is her guess. The heart gets lonely 
some days. Is Jacob’s guess.
Feeding Alice renders longing and irritation 
irrelevant, without obliterating either.
Aspens snap their every yellow leaf. 
The trees expected we’d be gone by now. 
Their every yellow leaves don’t guess. 

Thank you to the editors of New Ohio Review, 2023 for selecting this poem.

"September" by Gerhard Richter
Museum of Modern Art, N.Y.C.
Renegade Sonnets Rendered via Ekphrasis

A few notes on Rob Stanton’s Once Removed (Nono Press/2022) by Sarah Sarai

 

We look to the past to understand the past. Also repetitive disorders and daily stupidities. We look to the past to understand a shared present, greed and hauteur acted out, to divine a future we pretend we can’t foresee. Or we try to persuade our leaders in a pursuit of common sense, kindness, equality. One much-studied and globally shared event of the past, the attack on the Twin Towers, is interrogated by Rob Stanton in his ekphrastic chapbook Once Removed. 

 

The object of Stanton’s contemplation is, of course, not the attack but the remarkable painting September by Gerhard Richter, whose work often magnetizes viewers. I’ve watched museum patrons squint and study his canvases in a manner that feels unique from interrogations of other artwork. Strictly anecdotal, on my part. 

 

Nudged by an anniversary of the attack on the Twin Towers and through a study of Richter’s 2005 painting, Stanton created these stencil sonnets. My term. They are a cry from a heftier sonnet of classical literary history and the many contemporary iterations. They are stripped. As in September. Neither better nor worse than earlier iterations of a loved form of poetry, each wee sonnet is comprised of four stanzas: two brief, each four lines, all short; then two stanzas, three lines each. Each a puff of word or each word is a puff of smoke. Appropriate by design as September depicts the Towers after the second building was hit. Matching what we witnessed on that day, in Richter’s work the structures are discernable only through menace of dust and aggregation. From Rob Stanton’s Sonnet 154:

 

A corona of suddenly
insignificant 

 

                        litter spills
                        Blow back.
                        blow back 

 

On the twentieth anniversary of the attack I broke down and watched the documentaries. That’s what there was, “litter spill.” For the record, Richter was flying to New York in a commercial plane that had to be diverted to Halifax. But that fact makes him no more privy to this wound that will not heal than anyone else. 

 

From “160.” “...already / pockets of flouted sky / cerulean blue / are being tendered.” 

 

Once Removed is a Nono Press venture, as is Sonnets 1-159, in a longer work “dedicated to the work of Luc Tuymans.” 

 

 

 

A native of the UK, Rob Stanton teaches in Austin, Texas. He is the author of The Method (Penned in the Margins, 2011) and Trip- (Knives Forks and Spoons, 2013). Contact him for more information.

 

 

 

 

 

 

"The End of November: The Birds That Didn't Learn How to Fly" by Thornton Dial, 2007. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, N.Y.I am close to embarrassed, but what would be the point. I already know that I am not Wallace Stevens, and he is not Sarah Sarai. That being established may I say I had Stevens’ poem in mind as I wrote “Another Way of Looking.” I was responding to Stevens. Saying, Click a prism and you will see different perspectives with each time. But now that I see my poem adjacent to the great Wallace Stevens’ poem, “Thirteen Ways...” Well. Yikes and all that. Sigh. I plow on. First my poem. Then his. Thanks to the editor of Prelude , Stu Watson.

Another Way of Looking
by Sarah Sarai

The poem on the page
remains on the page

the page with the poem is
the page with the poem it

may lift it self (up)

or snack and nap

but there it is on the page

in all its theory

in all its wisdom which

is not all wisdom

hey, a blackbird knows wisdom

just one blackbird

no need to cast shade over

the whole of them

from Prelude Journal, Stu Watson, ed.

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird
by Wallace Stevens

I
Among twenty snowy mountains,   
The only moving thing   
Was the eye of the blackbird.   

II
I was of three minds,   
Like a tree   
In which there are three blackbirds.   

III
The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.   
It was a small part of the pantomime.   

IV
A man and a woman   
Are one.   
A man and a woman and a blackbird   
Are one.   

V
I do not know which to prefer,   
The beauty of inflections   
Or the beauty of innuendoes,   
The blackbird whistling   
Or just after.   

VI
Icicles filled the long window   
With barbaric glass.   
The shadow of the blackbird   
Crossed it, to and fro.   
The mood   
Traced in the shadow   
An indecipherable cause.   

VII
O thin men of Haddam,   
Why do you imagine golden birds?   
Do you not see how the blackbird   
Walks around the feet   
Of the women about you?  

VIII
I know noble accents   
And lucid, inescapable rhythms;   
But I know, too,   
That the blackbird is involved   
In what I know.   

IX
When the blackbird flew out of sight,   
It marked the edge   
Of one of many circles.   

X
At the sight of blackbirds   
Flying in a green light,   
Even the bawds of euphony   
Would cry out sharply.   

XI
He rode over Connecticut   
In a glass coach.   
Once, a fear pierced him,   
In that he mistook   
The shadow of his equipage   
For blackbirds.   

XII
The river is moving.   
The blackbird must be flying.   

XIII
It was evening all afternoon.   
It was snowing   
And it was going to snow.   
The blackbird sat   
In the cedar-limbs.

from the Poetry Foundation website.