GNASHING OF TEETH SEA TO SHINING SEA: AFRIKANERS BATTLED AFRICANS
1. Across The Sea Beautiful Sea, Cataracts and Broken Teeth Are Scarified in Accra.
(with thanks to the Ghana Writes Literary Group)
Anonymous A: [Too] shy of scars, I am anxious plus not proud of myself.
Anonymous B: I have mutilations, can’t wear swimsuits, thusly avoid going into open water pools.
Anonymous C: Body disabled, unloved by others including family, I comfort myself as needed.
Anonymous D: Lesbian and scared, I hide behind what looks like a normal girl’s skin.
Anonymous E: Knowing well that I am truly unbeautiful, acne pits dominate my face which I hate.
Anonymous F: Morbidly obese, to put it mildly, except for the moment of gorge, I don’t ever feel great.
Anonymous G: My straight subordinates at work sometimes think I’m their age mates.
Anonymous H: Office workers mistake me for a colleague’s child since I’m too small, slim or short.
THIS HAPPENS TO BE ON OFFER TODAY
Prince/sses transit underworld — drag queen Persephone’s sons of bitches
butch it up — whether in what seems
like Hades on earth in U.S. emergency rooms
or divorce courts, maybe more
serious civil war venues like Rakka Syria,
& perhaps South Africa’s drought
worst in over a century where fly-ridden
bloated malnourished red-haired
infants can’t get good suck from mothers’
pencil-thin breasts
while sanctuary
cities such as East Oakland rush
to signup then host elegant self-contained
11 year-old black belt prodigies
who play ouds tonight in Humanist Hall
halfway through their Axl Rose
tour which will end in a Japanese village
during cherry blossom harvest time
as they are accompanied on pear-shaped
banjos by now elderly Zen avatars
somehow seppuku survivors handing down rich multi-millennial rituals.
Gerard Sarnat
won the San Francisco Poetry’s 2020 Contest, the Poetry in the Arts First Place Award plus the Dorfman Prize, and has been nominated for handfuls of 2021 and previous Pushcarts plus Best of the Net Awards. Gerry is widely published in The North Meridian Review, Buddhist Poetry Review, Gargoyle, Blue Minaret, Main Street Rag, New Delta Review, Northampton Review, New Haven Poetry Institute, Newark Public Library, Texas Review, Vonnegut Journal, Brooklyn Review, San Francisco Magazine, Monterey Poetry Review, The Los Angeles Review, New York Times, London Reader and Review Berlin as well as by Harvard, Stanford, Dartmouth, Penn, Chicago and Columbia presses. He’s authored the collections Homeless Chronicles (2010), Disputes (2012), 17s (2014), Melting the Ice King (2016). Gerry is a physician who’s built and staffed clinics for the marginalized, as well as a Stanford professor and healthcare CEO. Currently he is devoting energy and resources to protect democracy plus deal with climate justice, and he serves on Climate Action Now’s board. Gerry’s been married since 1969 with three kids plus six grandsons, and is looking forward to future granddaughters.