Ooops, I missed a couple of weeks. 

Oh well.

I'm going to do something I rarely do and post another one of mine. I just wrote this a couple of weeks ago when I was in Seattle.


5:00 in Pike Place Market


A woman stacks colorful glass
pipes she made on a table

next to the tie dye t-shirts
being sold by a man with

a grey beard and a blue
bandana. A middle-aged Asian

lady sells fresh peaches across
the street from a barefoot

man with crooked teeth who sings
“Octopus’s Garden” and plays his

acoustic as I pass by. The
natives lie in the grass

in front of the Sound, soaking in
as much Vitamin D as possible

on this sunny September afternoon
in Seattle. I look at the Ferris wheel

and wonder how I would feel at the top.

Since my first chapbook just came out on Tuesday (see above!), I decided to do something I never do and post one of my own poems as the poem of the week. Plus, people have been asking me to post more of my own poetry on the website. So here you go.

This is from my book, Coiled and Swallowed.

Visiting

by Sara Crawford


Four hours, mostly on a deserted
two-lane road,
with fields of corn, cotton, and
cows whizzing
by outside of the car windows,
we drive
past a sign that says,
“clean restrooms here!”
with an arrow that points
to a brown house
still standing
(not like the ten or so
abandoned
crumbling
houses I counted
along the way)
where an old man in a straw hat
sits in a squeaky rocking chair
on the front porch,
selling boiled peanuts.

We arrive in a town,
smaller than a University,
just above the Georgia-Florida
border
and pull into the parking lot.
This is my brother’s house now,
underneath the Spanish moss,
next to the palm trees,
behind the barbed wire fences,
and a policewoman who
looks at her watch.
Visiting hours, already.

We get out of our car,
stretching our legs
looking similar to a family
I saw in a van
a few miles back
starting their summer vacation.
The little sisters used beach towels
for pillows in the back seat.

After we give the policewoman
our driver’s licenses, fill out the
appropriate forms, walk down the
long
grey
hallway,
waving away
South Georgia gnats, unwelcome guests
that invade every room,
we sit at a table.
In brown metal folding chairs that must
hurt my mother’s back.
My brother,
dressed in orange,
sits across from us.

As visiting hours pass, we catch up,
laughing, pretending
everything is normal.
The fluorescent lights shine brightly
down on us, and a fan
in the corner
of the room
blows a little girl’s blonde curls
as she hugs her father, his tattooed arms
tightly around her little white dress.

For a moment, we are just a family
around a table,
like when we used to play Risk.
My brother always won.
I wish we could all get back
into the car
and follow that van down to
Florida.
But this is my brother’s house now.
I guess we’ll have to wait until next summer
(or maybe the summer after)
for beach towels that can double
as pillows.
For now, we have the gnats and metal folding chairs.
At least, we have that.

I'm going to do something I never do and post one of my own poems for poem of the week. I've had a few of the other poets on here ask to see some of my work, so I decided now was a good time to do that. Plus, this poem reflects my mood today.

Roots

by Sara Crawford

Standing on the edge of something I can’t see,
Inching dangerously close,
hugging a tree that
stands next to the lumberjack,
its roots are in danger so they
wrap themselves
around
my frail
body
and now we coexist…
somewhere in the mist.

Can you please sneak inside
and tell me what tomorrow
looks like?
Do you see me falling
into this tree? Blood spilling
into the bark until flesh
intertwines
with leaves, rooting
bones into soil?
Do you see me falling somewhere else?
A pair of uneasy lips meet, igniting,
flying into something outside of
ourselves?
Or something less glamorous?
No falling at all?
A cup of coffee and the morning paper…
watching the sun emerge
from the horizon,
more sure of himself than I
will ever be.