Nonagenarian+ Role Model Not Racked With Concerns

April 2020 | poetry

Dearest Friends,

I wanted to inform you of the cats and my disposition to move from San Francisco to Palm Springs in about three weeks, living out remaining time in an easier quieter environment.

Serving on non-profit boards plus having a half-century’s active social scene has just become more than we can handle.

I’ll try to adapt to a different existence, and hope to stay in touch with everybody — but I do ask that you be patient, not push too hard – there will be a lot to adjust to plus everything takes extra time at this stage of the game.

I plan on maintaining current email address/ mobile number, will advise you of new home address/ local landline number once have settled in hopefully beginning of March.

I’m so very grateful to have wonderful chums who shower me with love along with support.

Much as I would like to see everyone prior to leaving, it’s impossible. Your understanding is appreciated.

Escape the cold, come to visit next winter during the desert’s wildflower blooming as well as January’s Film Festival if not sooner!

Particularly with my life’s partner passed, I’m missing each of you already.

Gerard Sarnat

Gerard Sarnat won the Poetry in the Arts First Place Award plus the Dorfman Prize, and has been nominated for a handful of recent Pushcarts plus Best of the Net Awards. Gerry is widely published in academic-related journals (e.g., University Chicago, Stanford, Oberlin, Brown, Columbia, Harvard, Pomona, Johns Hopkins, Wesleyan, University of San Francisco) plus national (e.g., Gargoyle, Main Street Rag, New Delta Review, MiPOesias, American Journal Of Poetry, Clementine, pamplemousse, Deluge, Poetry Quarterly, Hypnopomp, Free State Review, Poetry Circle, Poets And War, Cliterature, Qommunicate, Indolent Books, Pandemonium Press, Texas Review, San Antonio Review, Brooklyn Review, San Francisco Magazine, The Los Angeles Review and The New York Times) and international publications (e.g., Review Berlin and New Ulster). He’s authored the collections Homeless Chronicles (2010), Disputes (2012), 17s (2014), Melting the Ice King (2016). Gerry is a physician who’s built and staffed clinics for the marginalized as well as a Stanford professor and healthcare CEO. Currently he is devoting energy/ resources to deal with global warming. Gerry’s been married since 1969 with three kids plus six grandsons, and is looking forward to future granddaughters.

Pegasus Teaches Unicorn the Value of the Hereafter

April 2020 | poetry

            (Pegasus Constellation – Winged Horse)

You ask me the difference between Pegasi

and unicorns as embers of fire complete

burned circles four feet in front of our feet.

Our town hankers for a time

when fire and hunger were rare,

when wings or horns were inconsequential,

when hearts waltzed woozy with pixelated promise.

Now wings and horns are all we have. One fantasy

after another. Men lament their learned helplessness.

Women work to recall the struggle to overcome it.

Unicorns all glitter magic until they impale our throats

with singular horns. Shame shows itself as hemorrhage,

detectible only by internal scan. What the world

sees as magic you see as disgrace. A dearth of grace.

Our blood fertilizes our flowers, blooming toward the cloud

cover of heaven. Pegasus uplifts the dead.

Unicorn=death and death and death.

Pegasus=angel on which the soul floats into whisper.

Amy Strauss Friedman

Amy Strauss Friedman is the author of the poetry collection The Eggshell Skull Rule (Kelsay Books, 2018) and the chapbook Gathered Bones are Known to Wander (Red Bird Chapbooks, 2016). Amy’s poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net, and her work has appeared in Pleiades, Rust + Moth, The Rumpus, and elsewhere. Her work can be found at amystraussfriedman.com.