Poetry – Issue 7 | November 2009
South Africa
by Sarah J. Sloat
I hate the persistence of footsteps
and the dust that chokes up
in gulps when crossing the land
that covers the diamond mines.
Particular boots are my fancy.
Rubber heels work best on wet
asphalt, and black is a color
that compliments abruptness.
I have walked over fields,
spelunked through hardscrabble
on my way to the city.
I don’t like the sound of rubber
on fungus, nor the sandal that thwacks
like more threatening leathers.
Mostly I like to slice my ankles
through weeping love grass, passive
grass all dewed and delicious,
shifty grass without
a damned thing to cry about.
About the author
Sarah J. Sloat remembers collecting stamps before the days of e-. She remembers being allowed to smoke in the office, the back rows of the cinema, and on airplanes. If she could, she’d choose Philadelphia over New York, but for a long time she’s lived across the Atlantic perfecting her German grammar. Sarah’s poems have appeared in Court Green, Hayden’s Ferry Review, and RHINO. Her chapbook, “Excuse me while I wring this long swim out of my hair,” is due in 2011 from Dancing Girl Press.
Read our current issue, Issue 7 | November 2009:
Poetry
Berlin by Sy Margaret Baldwin
Two Poems by Sean Edgley
After Your Funeral I Set Out to Find You in Different Time Zones by Jennifer Faylor
Painter by Ricky Garni
Other Than by Dana Guthrie Martin
Two poems by Timothy Kercher
Five Views of Guanajuato: A Mythology by Athena Kildegaard
Two poems by Mary Kovaleski Byrnes
Goya by Trent Nutting
The Changing of the Flowers by Jennifer Saunders
Two poems by Ken Turner
Postcard prose
Buttons by Jennifer Faylor
The Enemy Tree by Kirby Wright
Escape on the Canal by Addie Zierman
