somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond

a poem by e e cummings

somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully ,suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility:whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands

in bloom

in the warm New York 4 o'clock light we are drifting back and forth

between each other like a tree breathing through its spectacles

--Frank O'Hara, from "Having a Coke with You"

In honor of Poetry Month...

What a great month to have my poems published! (though any month would be a great month). Remember when I was submitting poems like a boss? Yeah, that totally paid off.

Today I have two poems for you to read, located in these very fine places:

MiPOesias Magazine (page 33. you can also download a digital copy or purchase a print issue here)

anderbo.com (just find "Sarah Certa" and click on it)

Also, in case you missed it, my dear friend and very talented writer/editor/artist Emmalea Russo featured three of my poems in the inaugural issue of em:me magazine (I'm on pages 9-13). 

More soon....

It's April! Poetry! Nirvana! Flowers!

Although the oft indecisive weather in April is not my favorite (I'm a June kind of girl), April always ends up being a special month because 1) the promise of spring has arrived, unfurling itself from the tips of tree branches, in the sprouting green grass... 2) it's national poetry month (we poets get really excited that there's an entire month dedicated to what we do!) 3) it's Earth day this month, and Earth day will always be cool, and 4) it's the month that Kurt Cobain died in. I'm an obsessive Kurt Cobain fan and will forever mourn the fact that he died so young, years before I even discovered him. Coincidentally, April is also the month in which my love for Nirvana flourished--when I watched the MTV Unplugged in New York show, replayed on the 10-year anniversary of Cobain's death. On other notes, April is also the month in which my parents met, the month in which they got married, and it's the month that I'll (hopefully) visit Seattle for the first time, to spend a weekend with my brother (more on that later. maybe).

SO, in order to honor all the things this month means to me, I'm going to be posting a bunch of shit that has to do with most or perhaps all of the above things.

First up, tree buds and gnarly grunge: