#sarah xerta

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Part of me knows I am no longer a person (was I ever a person?) — Sarah Xerta, from Juliet I

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[chrcmatics]

FIVE SONGS for obi-wan.

i.     THE ARCHER ; TAYLOR SWIFT — awake in the night / i pace like a ghost / the room is on fire / invisible smoke / and all of my heroes / die all alone

ii.     MERCURY ; SLEEPING AT LAST — i'll go anywhere you want / anywhere you want / anywhere you want me

iii.     HURRICANE ; THIRTY SECONDS TO MARS — tell me, would you kill to save a life / tell me, would you kill to prove you're right / crash crash burn / let it all burn

iv.     EVERYTHING I WANTED ; BILLIE EILISH — but when i wake up i see you with me / and you say / as long as i am here no one can hurt you

v.     FOREST FIRE ; BRIGHTON — and how was i to know / i'm not strong / i should have saved you / and oh i hope you know / that you're my home / but now i'm lost

FIVE QUOTES for obi-wan.

i.     YOU SAY I KILLED YOU; HAUNT ME THEN! | emily brontë

ii.    WHAT CAN I TELL YOU, MY BROTHER, MY KILLER? | leonard cohen

iii.    ISOLATION IS NOT SAFETY, IT IS DEATH. IF NO ONE KNOWS YOU'RE ALIVE, YOU AREN'T. | neil hilborn

iv.    MY GRIEF IS TREMENDOUS BUT MY LOVE IS BIGGER. | cheryl strayed

v.   YOU ARE FILLED WITH LOSS, A GIANT MOBILE CEMETERY. | sarah xerta

TAGGED BY: @misfittcd

TAGGING: @amadaans, @lightsblooming, @moribundr

[pikslasrce]

good grief

good grief by bastille // philip k. dick // olivia gatwood // good grief by bastille // charles bukowski // in the wind by lord huron // sarah xerta // talking to grief; denise levertov

***all images are from pinterest, none of them are mine***

[invisiblebeesstuff]

You're both the fire and the water that extinguishes it. You're the narrator, the protagonist, and the sidekick. You're the storyteller and the story told. You are somebody's something, but you are also your you.

- Aza Holmes, John Green's Turtles All The Way Down

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[hellotomyoldheart]

quotes i can’t stop thinking about

part four

“how they told me i was having fun all the time, and there was no way to explain that i wasn’t.” - emma cline, the girls.

“poets are always taking the weather so personally. they’re always sticking their emotions in things that have no emotion.” - j.d. salinger, nine stories. 

“my mother used to knit my mittens too big so they’d fit me when i grew. i’d wear them and i’d look like what i wasn’t yet.” - andrea gibson, about the weather. 

“then she spit my teeth into her hands.” - gillian flynn, sharp objects.

“underneath all that white noise there’s a lack.” - andrea portes, hick.

“if we were teenagers, i could kiss you. but i’m on a platform behind a counter wearing a name tag and we’re too old to be young.” - caroline kepnes, you.

“i can tell that there's a story here that starts like an earthquake and ends like a hurricane. that there isn't a storm drain big enough to collect all the tears she shed for this woman who's name tag she wears like a shield against the world's cruelty. dorothy clears her throat, smiles and says; you haven't touched your coffee. we don't always get the answers we want. sometimes a simple look can haunt us enough to know that some ghosts need their rest.” - specials, shane koyczan. 

“you were in luck; you were saved. you had been on the roadside. next to the ditch filled with swamp lilies, rotting in the end-of-summer sun. you were in luck. the emt said nothing had been broken. your skin would grow back. you were saved. because you were fourteen, it was your birthday, and you still believed in being saved.” - sherine elise gilmour, luck.

“you know this is how he saw you: he didn’t. this is how he saw you: something to be ruined.” - sarah xerta, juliet (ll)

“my mom asks if everything’s okay, and i say of course. drowning is a quiet, desperate thing.” - brenna twohy, swallowtail. 

“you came out screaming and alive and look at you now, look at how you’ve learned to hide your teeth.” - olivia gatwood, ode to my bitch face. 

“i was never good at this body. there was always something in me so anxious to crawl out.” - kiki nicole, nobody’s daughter. 

“the sun still rises and sets, like it always has. it seems cruel that it wouldn’t stop, just for a little while, to show how much darker the world is without them in it.” - sarah glenn marsh, reign of the fallen. 

“she had come to me in the only way she could.” - donna tartt, the goldfinch.

[satuniii]

feel your chest shatter into fragments, so many pieces of bone you will spend the rest of the night sweeping up with your hands, the rest of your life weeping, 

Sarah Xerta,  Juliet (II)

[lifeinpoetry]

I am tired of being melodramatic

and calling it art. I am tired

of people getting off on my survival

for free.

— Sarah Xerta, from “Tie,” published in Wyvern Lit

[potato-awesome]

-Sarah Xerta, Juliet (ll)

[invisiblebeesstuff]

[mortalpractice]

Sometimes I grab whichever hand is in front of me, because sometimes not drowning is the priority, even if the hand ends up hurting me, what else was I supposed to do? But still I am greedy. Still I want it all, and now that I’m not drowning I am sliding back into my original whorish self. I am growing more entitled to space, entitled to feeling entitled to space. I am taking all my notes from you. I want to tongue the molecules that make up an object as well as the spaces between them. There is no emptiness. What I mean is I’m alive today and loving it in spite of you, maybe even because of you, either way without you.

Sarah Xerta, from “Low-Frequency Love,” published in Wyvern Lit

[bostonpoetryslam]

I even did yoga this week, took a bath, slept long nights and practiced holding magick in my hands, pushed warm light in your general direction. If only I could be the light, this general good feeling, like living rooms at dusk, how good they are at keeping the cold out.

Sarah Xerta, “Magick,” published in Wyvern Lit

[lifeinpoetry]

I record

my mistakes, trace the weakest

parts of me in the dirt

so that I’ll be remembered as real.  

— Sarah Xerta, from “Tie,” published in Wyvern Lit

[misterfoghatswildride]

“… It’s the number / one thing on the to-do list I am always / meaning to write. I even did yoga / this week, took a bath, slept long nights and / practiced holding magick in my hands, pushed / warm light in your general direction.”

[giganticsequins]

9 of the Best Books I Read This Year by Poetry Editor Chrissy Friedlander

Ban en Banlieue by Bhanu Kapil

CITIZEN by Claudia Rankine

Patter by Douglas Kearney

NO: a guided meditation by Sarah Xerta

These Are the Gloria Stories by Kelin Loe

The Pulp Vs. The Throne by Carrie Lorig

Intersex by Aaron Apps

WAKE by A.T. Grant

no shame in saying that I re-read all of the Harry Potter books again for the billionth time, and THEY ARE STILL THE BEST.

[andlohespoke]

Nostrovia! Poetry's 2015 Pushcart Prize Nominations

We’re excited to share our Pushcart Prize nominations from our 2015 Chapbook Contest:

Bob Schofield – “Fact #507“ + “Fact #999“

August Smith – “Two Stars, and a Sliver of a Third“ + “Horse“

Sarah Xerta – “Prologue“ + “Untitled (Pg. 23)”

Beyond these excellent poems, we encourage you to check out the chapbooks in their entirety, which you can download (for FREE!) here: http://nostroviatavern.com/2015/12/04/np-2015-pushcart-prize-nominations/

Sarah Xerta – “Juliet II“

August Smith – “Bird Lizard Horse“

Bob Schofield – “Moon Facts“

Truly 2015 has been a magical year, and we can’t wait to see what next year brings! Cheers!