ISSN # 1549-0327

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R o c k   S a l t   P l u m   R e v i e w                                 Spring 2006

Sarah Sloat - Two Poems

Susie

The table in your new home

barely holds the oval plums,

sprawling in a bowl

the shade of California almonds.

Summer here is a drawn-out sigh

lifting from the hills with reluctance.

You’ve learned to take things slow

with all the children grown.

There’s almost too much time, you smile

and sip the dry wine you prefer,

neither venom nor elixir.

In your garden, mushrooms come

head first through the soil

like a soft birth you cannot begrudge.

Pruning the bushes this morning,

you crossed the yard to show me

what you found among the flowers --

a bee that died the perfect death,

curled in the folds of a rose.

Sarah Sloat

Sarah Sloat was born in New Jersey, where she attended college and graduate school. There were many books in her house growing up, but just a few poetry books  that she remembers: the collected ee cummings, an illustrated Leaves of Grass and a book of selected Keats poems. Traveling light to China in 1988, she copied many of her favorite poems into a notebook to take along. The inscription on the cover is from Dylan Thomas: “I myself, do not read poetry for anything but pleasure. I read only poems I like. This means, of course, I have to read a lot of poems I don’t like before I find the ones I do, but, when I do find the ones I do, then all I can say is Here they are…” Sarah has worked as a NOW canvasser, a language book editor, a dog-walker, an English teacher and a reader for the blind. For about a decade now she’s worked for a news agency, mostly in Frankfurt, Germany. Sarah and her husband Carlo have a daughter and son. Her poems have appeared in Diner, West Branch, Stirring and Pebble Lake Review, among other publications.

Saints have no moderation, nor do poets; just exuberance.

                          

                             - Anne Sexton

Chianti Bottle with Candle

You were a pot-bellied beauty

from fields surrounding Poggibonsi

before you went

slightly sour.

Wiry men, purple tongues

dyed-through, had you corralled,

prodded your soggy interior.

Bruise and bruising, hand and heel,

these laced the corset, these

spun the braid to hold you.

Now you stand,

a stout emptiness.

The heartless love high drama; so

ensues a spectacle, the agony

of tangling wax.

The new suitor you’re stuck with –

like the rest, a blatherer,

all connubial drip and splatter,

exhausting himself in one evening.

Perched on the checkered cloth,

you remember, once

you were soft inside,

your skin peeled back like tulle.

However molten, tears will dry,

but no pairing lasts like this –

you sealed shut,

and love like smoke,

sleep-walking away.

Jalina Mhyana