SARAH BLAKE
Dollhouse
How we watched,
so stoned at college,
The Wizard of Oz
while playing
Pink Floyd's
Dark Side of the Moon,
I think we could
watch Dollhouse
and listen to
Best of Parliament Funkadelic: Give Up the Funk.
Echo is armed
and dressed in black
pleather to the wrists,
and we're hearing,
Shoot them with that bop gun!
And when Echo
is sexed up--
a chance for,
I want the bomb, I want the P-funk. I want to get funked up.
We could get
distracted, start
putting our sparkling
tongues together.
We could follow
one song into the next by
putting our hands
up each other's tee-shirts.
The whole night,
all kinds of that
Psycho-alpha-disco-beta-bio-aqua-do-loop.
A night, great as
when The Wizard of Oz
turns technicolor
and Floyd's "Money" starts
with the ringing of
moving coins, registers
and slot machines, with
Dorothy's dream-world
shining like Glinda,
good witch,
has been going around
kissing everything.
Dollhouse
How we watched,
so stoned at college,
The Wizard of Oz
while playing
Pink Floyd's
Dark Side of the Moon,
I think we could
watch Dollhouse
and listen to
Best of Parliament Funkadelic: Give Up the Funk.
Echo is armed
and dressed in black
pleather to the wrists,
and we're hearing,
Shoot them with that bop gun!
And when Echo
is sexed up--
a chance for,
I want the bomb, I want the P-funk. I want to get funked up.
We could get
distracted, start
putting our sparkling
tongues together.
We could follow
one song into the next by
putting our hands
up each other's tee-shirts.
The whole night,
all kinds of that
Psycho-alpha-disco-beta-bio-aqua-do-loop.
A night, great as
when The Wizard of Oz
turns technicolor
and Floyd's "Money" starts
with the ringing of
moving coins, registers
and slot machines, with
Dorothy's dream-world
shining like Glinda,
good witch,
has been going around
kissing everything.
Lie to Me
Ria can see a lie
so it's ok to put her
in a room with
someone dangerous.
And she can get three
men into a room,
she can hold
her liquor. Oh Ria,
Ria Torres—my
googling says your
name means
Laughing Towers.
Even I know
that's not quite true--
a little lie for you,
Ria, dear Ria,
America's
Hispanic woman
of our dreams.
Once fields of wheat
for us, skin of the land.
Well look at this
now, new, sun kissed,
toasted, gorgeous,
skin of Ria.
God shed his grace
on thee. Crown thy
good.
Who do I tell
I want centerfold
photos of her
in my magazines?
I want her on
a billboard, bigger
than a thousand
human hearts.
Someone tell
Ria Torres she is
beautiful to a woman
that’s not her mother.
I hear Torres and toro,
toro! Ria, almost rojo,
and something soft
moves through the air.
Sarah Blake's poetry has appeared in the Boston Review, The Awl, Drunken Boat, and many other journals. This year, she received a Literature Fellowship from the NEA. She lives outside of Philadelphia with her husband and son, where she's Assistant Editor at Saturnalia Books and Poetry Editor at iARTistas.
Ria can see a lie
so it's ok to put her
in a room with
someone dangerous.
And she can get three
men into a room,
she can hold
her liquor. Oh Ria,
Ria Torres—my
googling says your
name means
Laughing Towers.
Even I know
that's not quite true--
a little lie for you,
Ria, dear Ria,
America's
Hispanic woman
of our dreams.
Once fields of wheat
for us, skin of the land.
Well look at this
now, new, sun kissed,
toasted, gorgeous,
skin of Ria.
God shed his grace
on thee. Crown thy
good.
Who do I tell
I want centerfold
photos of her
in my magazines?
I want her on
a billboard, bigger
than a thousand
human hearts.
Someone tell
Ria Torres she is
beautiful to a woman
that’s not her mother.
I hear Torres and toro,
toro! Ria, almost rojo,
and something soft
moves through the air.
Sarah Blake's poetry has appeared in the Boston Review, The Awl, Drunken Boat, and many other journals. This year, she received a Literature Fellowship from the NEA. She lives outside of Philadelphia with her husband and son, where she's Assistant Editor at Saturnalia Books and Poetry Editor at iARTistas.