*

A former Somerville resident, Miriam Sagan was born in NYC, raised in New Jersey, educated in Boston, liberated in San Francisco, and has lived more than half her life in Santa Fe, New Mexico. She is the author of 30 published books, including the novel Black Rainbow (Sherman Asher, 2015) and Geographic: A Memoir of Time and Space (Casa de Snapdragon). which won the 2016 Arizona/New Mexico Book Award in Poetry. She founded and headed the creative writing program at Santa Fe Community College until her retirement in 2016. Her awards include the Santa Fe Mayor’s award for Excellence in the Arts, the Poetry Gratitude Award from New Mexico Literary Arts, and a Lannan Foundation residency in Marfa, Texas.

Pearl Street

moon in the serene sky of autumn
binge and purge
as it turns
over my restless sleep

in the oddly slanted apartment
you could drop a marble
and have it roll the length
past the old-fashioned
embroidered doilies
and a bookshelf holding
French philosophy

samsara
in its New England guise,
towards the river
leaves swept back and forth
by an unhousewifely
wind
the past cluttered with
its collections
its tiger lilies
its salt ponds
its betrayals

the neighbor keeps bees
between triple deckers
sustained on thistle
and potted fuchsia, geranium, basil
gone to white flower

a habit of survival,
coffee drips,
the neighbor steals–collects–
the honey
and shares it
golden in a glass jar

famous poets die
along with the ones
who actually were my friends

— Miriam Sagan

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To have your work considered for the Lyrical send it to:
Doug Holder, 25 School St.; Somerville, MA 02143
dougholder@post.harvard.edu