poetry by Gerard Sarnat

I. June 1961 Expected, Experienced, Remembered

Bullshit enrichment shorthand plus typing classes
each parent insisted on as if their son was planning
to be some kind of secretary, after summer school
I’d take the bus or hitchhike downtown to haul racks
of aniline-dye emitting schmatas from this clothing
factory to various loading dock by which time tears
dripped into thick glasses above drippy burning eyes
just when the foreman’s inevitably right there to ask
out loud, Oy why the fuck he had to keep a puny boy
whose daddy knew an owner on his goddamn payroll
that’d end Friday unless the kid pronto picked pace up.

Working in a Pomona machine shop during college,
Saturday nights if there was party time at our frat house
I tried to keep my crummy hands deep in my pockets.
If the boss gave me a Sunday off, I would go home
where Pops made me do yard work, trim all the trees
-- it happened so infrequently new neighbors figured
such an unkempt young man’s simply latest hired help.

Once I figured out life could be a really tough out using
just sweat instead of brain equity, I flung my fertile nose
on to the grindstone to invent IBM’s infamous computer:
Watson beat Kasparov in chess then won Jeopardy plus
currently is close to winning wars on both cancer and drugs. 
Nowadays regular citizens of ordinary means petition me 
to solve neigh impossible engineering coding problems for 
the betterment of humanity -- as do many CEOs, Presidents.

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II. Time Travel Stains Linoleum 

Death rehearsal
well as betterment of well
sentient beings

noetic more animist sense
godly gobsmack
to peaceful plains beyond

new perspective
gathering, unconned inside
default mode bio

thu-thunk blood orange skin
sequins sequenced
undies cum too, or come to.

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III. Salty Sailor Transparent’s Opaque Kit And Caboodle

Ship’s cartographer, kids ashore, I’m a polymath Renaissance man 
though not in the full-blown tradition of a master like Da Vinci.
One last month on the USS Bush, most powerful bilge in the world,
snuggling after sex, we always sucked the sweat off each other’s nipples.

When got too full of me, I tasted the lust on the back of my hand.
Military Police nabbed us in our stowaway closet sneak spot.
Brig solitary confinement, tiny bottle smuggled in, three drops
licked with palm salt work like God fixed me an LSD Margarita.

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Late-phase poet arrived in his seventh decade—aphorist, humorist, or sometimes meanderist—Gerard Sarnat (he/they) is a multiple Pushcart and Best of the Net Award nominee. His work has been widely published, including in four collections, as well as in Rattle, the London Arts-Based Research Centre, the Israel Association of Writers in English, The Nature of Our Times/Poets for Science, Gravity of the Thing, Brooklyn Review, Tokyo Poetry Journal, Gargoyle, New Delta Review, Buddhist Review, and The New York Times. His poetry has also appeared through presses associated with Oberlin, St. John’s University, Northwestern, Yale, Pomona, Harvard, Missouri Baptist, Stanford, Dartmouth, Penn, Columbia, Grinnell, Johns Hopkins, NYU, Brown, North Dakota, McMaster, Maine, British Columbia, Toronto, Chicago, Virginia, and Alabama universities.

A Harvard Medical School-trained physician, Stanford professor, and healthcare CEO, he now devotes his energy and resources to climate justice, serving on Climate Action Now’s board. Sarnat has also been a member of the longest-running U.S. Jewish-Palestinian Dialogue Group. Married since 1969, he has three children, six grandsons, and eagerly awaits future granddaughters.Check out his work on gerardsarnat.com.