Sarah Gambito

[thepoetslizard]

Sarah Gambito is the author of Matadora (Alice James, 2004). She holds degrees from The University of Virginia (B.A.) and Brown University (M.F.A.). Her poems have appeared in The Iowa Review, The Antioch Review, The New Republic, Quarterly West, Fence and other journals. She is co-founder of Kundiman, a non-profit organization serving emerging Asian-American poets. She lives in New York City.





"Paloma’s Church in America"

Across the street a beautiful asian was burning. I took my sandals off. Seven times hotter the fire remembered babies. And canals of babies burning it back. I took off your sandals, and your sandals,
too. Sometimes we waited for stone tablets. Most often we brewed what tea we could of the desert. Silicate, mica, a mysterious formica. We drank and became practiced. We missed our mothers. Our mothers couldn’t call. We called in dreams. We dreamed illnesses on our new bodies. The bodies clung to covenants. The covenants, in turn, drove to scholarship. (Stewardship, pharmacists like to say. Star Connection, my Tanenbaum makes to say.) So many babies, the asian said. Across the street a beautiful iconoclast was burning. I do remember that dream more than all— that I did not
doubt. Your Honor, I saw the future.

- first published in Quarterly West

*


"Sonogram"

I dreamed my mother collapsed inside of me
and nothing else was true.
I was still and I cupped my heart’s stream
into my heart’s mouth and
I could do nothing.
This is to say I was a child.
Casting nets of silver so you feel
the feeling of

this is my job: the child is living
and can be named for a dog.
A dog would be pure black emotion.
A terrycloth terror we’ll rub on our bodies
and hold onto for fear of

she was a child. She was a child.
And in her child she felt her mother’s sadness.
I want to her to feel it
for how can I touch her, the beatitude, the velvet veto.
What hasn’t happened yet.
What it feels like to hold onto the stairs for help.

That’s every story—medea plumming candle.
Dead-rot dog
finking across the need to know.

As I stand in front of the “victim.”
She’s garrulous as we practice on the child
on her dovetail joints that despite everything
thrill and thrill and thrill.

*

"Shrewd and Beautiful is My New York"


Cushioning up to what she really wants.

I took my earring out. Had dinner with New York.
Spent the night with New York.

I mean. It helps to see my body, my orthotricyclin.
Grinning and standing by the cake.

All while I am trying on my butterfly kite.
I’ve made myself smaller and smaller so as to be able to sit atop my contraption.
The only thing is I would like to fly this kite as well.
I want to be in both places. Atop and below.
But always engaged in the butterfly.

I want to be your undergraduate girl. Your girl of golden headbands.
And trusting environments.
I’m rare like this. I want to find out what I already know

which is my heart in a basin,
washing the hands with

I look it up all the time. I look up other people’s love all the time.
I’m an expert on “falling on new york”

You give and you give you give when you do not want to give you give you give

you give when you do not want to give.

Because I am more than just myself. I am my dreaming self
getting better at this.


- from fishousepoems.org/archives/sarah_gambito