Sarah Sloat

Not wanting anything to die of hunger,
the whole town has come into my room,
with the pretty girls and with the old bastards,
the statue of Lautreamont,

the smoke rings of fancy cigars,
all the bodies recovered in the field of showers.
Some jump on horses and give chase-
already the world is far behind.

What do I care for the fragrant ring of mountains?
Night after night it’s a holiday.
If it rains I will have a wife;
she will never close her eyes.

And staggering by the bar,
the miser has opened his coffer-
come into my arms; sit on my lap,
my wife whose shoulders are champagne.

Sit down, Calamity,
wheat of the things of the world.

Roger Giroux “Naked” (Title)/Pierre Reverdy “Waterfall”/Philippe Soupault “Horizon”/Jacques Prevert “Pater Noster”/Andr&eacute Breton “Lethal Relief”/Robert Desnos “The Voice of Robert Desnos”/Pierre Reverdy “Clear Winter”/Blaise Cendrars “Sputterings”/Philippe Denis “Already”/Jules Supervielle “What Do I Care”/René Daumal “Sad Little Round of Life”/Benjamin P&eacuteret “Song in Time of Drought”/Paul Éluard “Lady Love”/Jacques Prévert “And the Fete Continues”/Jean Follain “End of a Century”/Valery Larbaud “Music after Reading”/Andr&eacute Breton “Free Union”/Henri Michaux “Repose in Calamity”/Yves Bonnefoy “Utmost Hour”

Sarah Sloat grew up in New Jersey, and has since lived in Kansas, Italy, China, and Philadelphia. For the past 15 years she’s lived in Germany, where she works for a news agency. Sarah has poems forthcoming in Opium, Barn Owl, and Bateau. Among her favorite poets are Vasko Popa and Norman Dubie.

“I haven’t had a front porch since I was a kid, though I’ve had balconies, stoops, fire escapes, and back terraces. Speaking from memory, then, better than on the front porch was always under the front porch: vines, potato bugs and damp, the shade, refuge, eavesdropping. And while the porch may have been a good perch for watching whatever was happening around the house or neighborhood, under the porch spared you all that.”