Gerard Sarnat: Poetry

Gerard Sarnat

1. Neanderthals’ Surreal Serendipitous Organic Chemistry, or,

Munching Tostadas, One Grandson Calls Me Toasted Dada

Cro-Mags’ family molecule takes shape.

My wife, I, all three siblings and their

cave kids now appear to get along

well enough with very similar

elemental forces of atomic

attraction every direction

-- that means at least for

this moment inside time

strengths are extremely

positive plus also equal.

How our carbon DNA

harmony works better

‘n better seems quite

mysterious: every

different reaction

from non-biologs

who’ve married

in gradually is

ok with these

tribal genes.

By the year

2045, folks

whose skin

isn’t white

will make

up what

will be

largest

group

in US.

***

2. HAIKU   

Moussaka

Rumbling word salad’s

crudacious chorus gurgles

Greek geeks’ gastric gas.

White College Educated

— thanks to Michael Hofmann’s “Auden”

‘Nother world’s turned collar

become casualized, short-run,

drip-dry, un[im]pressed?

***

3. Hooray Drug Enforcement Agency National RX Take Back Day

Emma Lazarus’s tired, poor, huddled masses wretched

refuse, homeless, tempest-tossed, have been displaced

by a new colossus of non-Ellis Island generic/ brand names

with over 6,000,000 Americans misusing controlled

substances mainly obtained from family and friends’

kitchen, bedroom or medicine cabinets: since the DEA

began its annual drop-in-the-bucket program 8 years ago,

over 4982 tons of unwanted unused, kick-the-bucket dangerous

refuse have been collected, incinerated then easily replaced

thanks to the ingenuity of Big Pharma, particularly Purdue,

no chicken agribusiness but rather those Sackler Brothers

who continue to bring you Oxycontin plus Just Say No.

***

4. Ginned Up Nature Via Nurture Fall Prayer

Farm feast or famine,

our pomegranates

and persimmons

that’ve come in

these weeks’re

all we got now

until oranges,

pears, apples,

cherries then

peaches plus

some plums,

few grapes:

perhaps my

Jesus Christ

you alone

do know

how they

will end

end with

winter

totally

dark

may

it

be

I?

***

5. Light Through Smog*

Too late for the train

newly fueled by

Trump’s corrupt coal

too late for old world

order slogging

end-stage capitalism

too late for our earth

whose ozone nest

we have now fouled

too late, civil libertarian

vows not to dis

can-do authoritarian god?

* No offense to coal country intended!

---

Gerard Sarnat is a physician who’s built and staffed homeless and prison clinics as well as a Stanford professor and healthcare CEO. He won the Poetry in the Arts First Place Award plus the Dorfman Prize, and has been nominated for Pushcarts plus Best of the Net Awards. Gerry is published in academic-related journals including University of Chicago, Stanford, Oberlin, Brown, Columbia, Virginia Commonwealth, Arkansas, Harvard, Johns Hopkins, Wesleyan, Slippery Rock, Appalachian State, Grinnell, American Jewish University, Sichuan University, University of Edinburgh and University of Canberra. Gerry’s writing has also appeared widely including recently in such U.S. outlets as  Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, Gargoyle,  Main Street Rag, New Delta Review, MiPOesias, poetica, American Journal Of Poetry, Poetry Quarterly, Poetry Circle, Every Day Poems, Clementine, Tiferet, Foliate Oak, Failed Haiku, New Verse News, Blue Mountain Review, Danse Macabre, Canary Eco, Fiction Southeast, Military Experience and the Arts, Poets And War, Cliterature,  Qommunicate, Texas Review, Brooklyn Review, San Francisco Magazine, The Los Angeles Review and The New York Times. Pieces have also been accepted by Chinese, Bangladeshi, Hong Kongese, Singaporian, Canadian, English, Irish, Scotch, Australian, New Zealander, Australasian Writers Association, Zimbabwean, French, German, Indian, Israeli, Romanian, Swedish, Moscovian and Fijian among other international publications. Mount Analogue selected KADDISH FOR THE COUNTRY for pamphlet distribution nationwide on Inauguration Day 2017. Amber Of Memory was chosen for the 50th Harvard reunion Dylan symposium. He’s also authored the collections Homeless Chronicles (2010), Disputes (2012), 17s (2014), and Melting the Ice King (2016). Gerry’s been married since 1969 with three kids, five grandsons with a sixth on the way and looking forward to future granddaughters.
gerardsarnat.com

Setu, July 2019