by Gerard Sarnat —
I’ll be down to get you in a taxi honey
You’d better be ready around half past eight
Ah baby don’t be late I want to be there
When the band starts honey. — The Darktown
Strutter’s Ball, Shelton Brooks, 1917
Disinvited by 99 44⁄100% rest of your world
which make their living on the street doing
aluminum siding
Ovenbird lays her five-spot under a light post
cause that’s where hoodlums or transvestites
ventually find us.
This melancholy clump of battered gay clay
oxymorons, doctors tell me only answer’s,
Have to amputate.
Gerard Sarnat MD won the Poetry in the Arts First Place Award plus the Dorfman Prize; has been nominated for Pushcarts plus Best of the Net Awards; authored HOMELESS CHRONICLES (2010), Disputes (2012), 17s (2014) and Melting The Ice King (2016); and is widely published including recently by New Ulster, Gargoyle, Stanford, Oberlin, Wesleyan, Johns Hopkins, Virginia Commonwealth, Harvard, University of Edinburgh, Columbia, Brown, Main Street Rag, American Journal Of Poetry, Poetry Quarterly, New Delta Review, Brooklyn Review, Los Angeles Review of Books, San Francisco Magazine, and New York Times. Mount Analogue selected KADDISH FOR THE COUNTRY for nationwide distribution on Inauguration Day 2017. His poetry was chosen for a 50th Harvard reunion Dylan symposium. Visit GerardSarnat.com for more.