If This Is Paradise Why Are We Still Driving
— Brendan Lorber, June 2018
on the occasion of my seventy-third birthday celebration,
having finally begun to learn some rules of paved roads
‘stead of taking usual straightshot hellbent damn 405
freeway from spitfire West L.A. down to pacific
Redondo Beach, fam elects to use an iPhone
Waze app to navigate lazy side streets —
where wobbly young lowlifes in pajamas
vape nicotine or maybe marijuana —
that then meet up with ocean views
as soon as possible which fluid
continuity more than makes
up for few extra minutes
sort of like coming up
slowly gently coolly
when you’re doing
SCUBA diving —
oy to thus avoid
The Bends.
Gerard Sarnat won the Poetry in the Arts First Place Award plus the Dorfman Prize, has been nominated for Pushcarts plus Best of the Net Awards, and authored four collections: HOMELESS CHRONICLES (2010), Disputes (2012), 17s (2014) and Melting The Ice King (2016) which included work published by Oberlin, Brown, Columbia, Virginia Commonwealth, Johns Hopkins and in Gargoyle, American Journal of Poetry (Margie), Main Street Rag, MiPOesias, New Delta Review, Brooklyn Review, Los Angeles Review of Books, Voices Israel, Blue Mountain Review,Tishman Review, Suisun Valley Review, Fiction Southeast, Junto, Heartwood, Tiferet, Foliate Oak, Parhelion, Bonsai plus featured in New Verse News, Eretz, Avocet, LEVELER, tNY, StepAway, Bywords, Floor Plan, Good-Man-Project, Anti-Heroin-Chic, Poetry Circle, Fiction Southeast, Walt Whitman Tribute Anthology and Tipton Review. “Amber of Memory” was the single poem chosen for my 50th college reunion symposium on Bob Dylan. Mount Analogue selected Sarnat’s sequence, KADDISH FOR THE COUNTRY, for pamphlet distribution on Inauguration Day 2017 as part of the Washington DC and nationwide Women’s Marches. For Huffington Post/other reviews, readings, publications, interviews; visit GerardSarnat.com. Harvard/Stanford educated, Gerry’s worked in jails, built/staffed clinics for the marginalized, been a CEO and Stanford Med professor. Married for a half century, Gerry has three kids/ four grandkids so far.
