Poetry

Fall 2008

Sarah Sarai

It Was Like You Walked Into a Tavern in the Great Northwest

In the time of Swedes fleeing the dark for sawdust floors
and antlers, where none pretend pretense or heard of it
prior to scratched plastic pitchers' bluff, resolute swilling
of stale piss foamy as milk from your sainted mother's handy
breast, she now with bosomly soft Oh Mighty Parent and
free of this earth-reeking flowing-over-with-tears veil which
simulates a gleefully clambered-to perch back of Niagara,
looking onto a blurring showered-curtain vista of peanut
husks strewn like on the bar sawdusty which happened—
this odd winterless winter—on the surprised green grass,
being why it was like you'd walked into a tavern in the great
Northwest tho it was a city park where vertical in its paws
a squirrel held a peanut and buzzed it to nothing and you
thought, Why worry for squirrels who pounce on bar food and
mice? Worry for Swedes' endless nights, 'k, but mostly shun
worry which is less than a crumb on pathway your breath—
so many—so varied—windmills your bestowed adventure.