ADVENT DAY TWENTY-FIVE: SARAH MARCUS!

Getting Ready for Christmas

Tonight, Liz and I drive home.
We are still laughing about some stupid song--
the sky is nearly pink--

she says something about how it's too late for us.

We take the wrong exit.
We take the wrong exit, again.

I roll my eyes
at the house on the right
with the ungodly light display.
Stop being so Jewish she barks,
because I am still hoarding pumpkins.

Through the window,
the purple is palpable,
and I'm ready now
for the sky to open wide

like the promise no one
ever expected
would be kept.

SARAH MARCUS is the author of They Were Bears (forthcoming in 2017 on Sundress Publications) and BACKCOUNTRY (2013, Finishing Line Press).

Her other work can be found at The Huffington Post, Cimarron Review, Spork, among others. She's an editor at Gazing Grain Press, a VIDA volunteer, and the Series Editor for As Is Ought To Be’s High School Poetry Series: Gender, Identity, & Race.

ADVENT DAY 25 * SARAH MARCUS!

"WE CAN BELIEVE WHAT WE CHOOSE"  

Home is where I learned 

the importance of clam bakes, 

to exfoliate thin layers of skin, 

and how to be quiet. Light bulbs 

shattered easily. I took the sharpness 

and ran it down my thighs. 

Then, there is mother, 

and she says one of us has to leave.
Mother says:

It’s not safe for you to be here. 

No, you’re not safe. 

No, you make it unsafe for us.

I remember a garden, 

and the cats giving over
rabbit tails, thighs, ears, 

parts of heads for us on the front stairs. 

The taxidermy in the basement,
antlers, eyes.

The deer always watched.
The sound of my knees hitting
the brick floor of the kitchen. 

I used to ride my horse to a place 

where even the driest ground
was soaked with water when it rained. 

Out on the boulder, where I could listen 

to the road, and look back at porch-screened-in faces.
Behind them, ever more eyes.

SARAH MARCUS is the author of BACKCOUNTRY (2013, Finishing Line Press) and Every Bird, To You (2013, Crisis Chronicles Press). Her other work can be found at NPR’s Prosody: Pittsburgh Radio for Contemporary Literature, The Huffington Post, McSweeney’s, Cimarron Review, CALYX Journal, Spork, Luna Luna, and Marie Claire, among others. She is an editor at Gazing Grain Press and a spirited Count Coordinator for VIDA: Women in Literary Arts. She holds an MFA in poetry from George Mason University and currently teaches and writes in Cleveland, OH.

Curatorial note: The following poems are a response to a call for poetry about 

rape culture for the annual Delirious Advent Feature; the call is in turn an 

immediate response to the Rolling Stone story “A Rape on Campus” about rape 

culture at the University of Virginia. However, they are also part of a larger 

conversation about rape in poetry communities. Curated by Jessica Smith and 

Susana Gardner.