Handmaid’s Tail

“you fit into me
like a hook into an eye

a fish hook
an open eye” 
― Margaret Atwood

Unbroken Hallelujahs

Nu* unicorn prancing double yellow lines, city of ghosts spirit house,
men like him were compared to Old Testament prophets,
meaning not that they could foresee the future
but that their healthy third eyes
could better understand the present

by seeing more layers of the meaning to life.

The title still applies, stalls my heart — may my older brother rest in peace.

*Yiddish for “Hello?”

Velveeta Diagnostician

The woman who has slept in the same bed with me nearly a half-century
always said my stable disposition was reflected
in a so-boringly unwavering bland diet
                     which existed until recently when she voiced concerns
that her spouse’s sudden yen for extravagant new tastes such as frog legs
in Szechuan sauce sweet & sour quail-drop soup
is a forme fruste for emerging dementia with brain softening like cheese.

Fang haiku

Q: Which will you be?
That old black or new white wolf?
A: The one you feed.

Gerard Sarnat is a retired physician who’s built/staffed homeless/ex-prisoner clinics. He was also a Stanford professor and healthcare CEO. As a writer, he’s won First Place in Poetry in the Arts Award, the Dorfman Prize, been nominated for handfuls of recent Pushcart and Best of the Net Awards, published four collections and appeared in Stanford, Johns Hopkins, Harvard, Pomona, Brown, Columbia, Wesleyan, University of Chicago periodicals as well as in Review Berlin, Gargoyle, Main Street Rag, Clementine, American Journal Poetry, Free State Review, Texas Review, Poetry Quarterly, New Delta Review, Brooklyn Review, LA Review, San Francisco Magazine, and The New York Times. Find his website here.