Gerard Sarnat has won the Poetry in the Arts Award and the Dorfman Prize; been nominated for Pushcarts and authored four collections: HOMELESS CHRONICLES (2010), Disputes (2012), 17s (2014) and Melting The Ice King (2016). His work is widely published in academic journals such as Oberlin, Brown, Columbia, Virginia Commonwealth, Wesleyan, Johns Hopkins, and also in Gargoyle, American Journal of Poetry, Main Street Rag, MiPOesias, New Delta Review, Brooklyn Review, Los Angeles Review of Books etc. Kaddish for the Country was selected for nationwide distribution in the USA on Inauguration Day 2017. ‘Amber Of Memory’ was the single poem chosen for Gerard’s 50th Harvard reunion symposium on Bob Dylan. Gerard is a Stanford professor, healthcare CEO and physician who has built and staffed clinics for the marginalised. Married since 1969; he has four grandkids.
Strong Freak Show Connection
Sagacious maybe even a bit salacious Red Bull chugger
way back from Burning Man on Black Rock Desert,
in flagrante delicto secretive bare-ass tattoo,
sloe-eyed red-handed stasis earned cooped down
in wrong parochial school classroom, scooped
up by her tribal peace officers middle of the night,
his piece of junk rotting as fast as proverbial corpses;
our Navajo code talker left res town to join their circus.
End of Time Fuck’s Global Warming
Reservations on evangelical res,
Lakota open table for organic
crime, meth — no jobs
except dealing plus casinos —
jumped outa our heads like animals.
Wind River froze, drugged,
lungs spit gobs of blood
down to earth: ungrounded,
we would live longer in Bangladesh
than here in South Dakota.
Hurricane hits home (just a little bit).
Dear Gerard Sarnat,
We want to thank you for authorizing us to publish your work this year.
However after much deliberation, it has been decided that the upcoming
anthology won’t be released. Due to the damages received from Harvey,
we are closing down our doors. Although the date’s currently unknown,
we am cautiously hopeful that we’ll be able to put open up again in 2019.
Best, Dude & Dudess
Caffeinated Free and Fair Trade Proposal
Instead of simply condemning famished
citizens from flooding countries
for getting rid of their imperfect progeny
they feel cannot be productive, why
don’t we ship nations our produce also flawed
on the outside — not let them all rot?
Haiti Post Hurricane Decampment haiku
My baby’s crying.
Too much of the world, whimpers
still mean starvation.