by Sarah Sarai

It's #tbt! Enjoy this great one from SWWIMEvery Day's archives!

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Arms, and the man…
Virgil


Christ almighty was that a year.
The damn war FINALLY over
though one many-faced hero heroed-on
ten more to slay a weaver’s suitors lined-up
and slicked-back on Ithaca Ave.

THAT year, warriors de-warriorized, or tried to.
Mothers had died fathers had died wives
husbands aunts uncles sisters brothers had died.

But not one golden-guy,
with eyes a glinty glint
and sweaty sweat on biceps bulging.

Sailing sea-y seas Aeneas ashored on land
of a lady founder
who took one gandy gander and
plunged into bicepboy’s eyes—not deep pools—

and after the jumping-off-joy—
no small joy we agree—was deady dead,
having lit sticks and self and such when
loverboy sailed again. Soon,
the city-on-a-boot he birthed,

Rome, all Latinated and lawyered up,
warriorized and empired, though,
we admit, the engineering was good.

Those aqueducts and bridges, those walls.
They were something else.

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Sarah Sarai is a birthright New Yorker and skintight Californian. Her most recent collection, Bright-Eyed (Poets Wear Prada), is a sort-of account of her family’s westward motion.

by Sarah Sarai

            Arms, and the man…

                        Virgil

Christ almighty was that a year.

The damn war FINALLY over

though one many-faced hero heroed-on

ten more to slay a weaver’s suitors lined-up

and slicked-back on Ithaca Ave.

THAT year, warriors de-warriorized, or tried to.

Mothers had died fathers had died wives

husbands aunts uncles sisters brothers had died.

But not one golden-guy,

with eyes a glinty glint

and sweaty sweat on biceps bulging.

Sailing sea-y seas Aeneas ashored on land

of a lady founder

who took one gandy gander and

plunged into bicepboy’s eyes—not deep pools—

and after the jumping-off-joy—

no small joy we agree—was deady dead,

having lit sticks and self and such when

loverboy sailed again. Soon,

the city-on-a-boot he birthed,

Rome, all Latinated and lawyered up,

warriorized and empired, though,

we admit, the engineering was good.

Those aqueducts and bridges, those walls. 

They were something else.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________

Sarah Sarai's second full-length poetry collection, That Strapless Bra in Heaven, will be published by Kelsay Books in 2020. Her first collection is The Future Is Happy (BlazeVOX) and her most recent chapbook is Geographies of Soul and Taffeta (Indolent Books). Her poems are in Ethel, Susan the Journal, Barrow Street, Boston Review, Prelude, Sinister Wisdom, Threepenny Review, Fifth Wednesday, Minnesota Review, and many other journals, as well as many anthologies. She lives in New York and works as an editor.