One of the most enriching, forward-thinking, fastest-growing online creative communities flourishing right now is the Poetry community, especially in those scenes that center on marginalized voices — Women, POC, Neurodivergent, and LGBTQ. Poetry Spotlight is a feature aiming to showcase the work of some of the most talented creators we’ve discovered making waves on the Internet literary circles, inside or outside the mainstream. This new installment focuses on the work of American writer Sarah A. O’Brien.
Sarah is a bisexual poet, teacher, and artist from Woburn, MA. She is a student in the Master of Fine Arts program at the University of Nebraska-Omaha. Sarah, the founder, and Editor-in-Chief of Boston Accent Lit is working on her first full-length poetry collection. She can be reached here for book editing inquiries and such.
The Dragon’s Injured Again
The kids are maiming their class pet.
I think it’s funny.
Its stuffed tail and arm are bandaged.
It has a neck brace made of tissues.
Mental health jokes are trendy.
Adults are crying in beds.
Alcoholics pretend to love
their aching, blank-minded mornings.
A poet proclaims no love poem
can ever top “I love you” and yet
we label Earth, while knowing
she has starlight at her core.
The kids are gurgling water
and mimicking sounds of dolphins.
Do you feel ready to face the wreckage?
Self-inflicted illusion shattering?
The clerk says, “Here’s your change,”
as if I asked for this.
There’s a parade of pain pending
for an innocent stuffed dragon
and my love sits, sexting strangers
in a hospital waiting room,
asking any god who listens
for another glimpse of heaven.
Refusing to Buy Cigarettes As a Last-Ditch Effort to Avoid Becoming Cliché
I’m hanging out
with the mouse in my apartment.
My boyfriend doesn’t believe
my insistence of its existence
until he sees it for himself.
Dragons are less active in summertime.
Come autumn, they congregate in craters—
to flirt and fuck each other.
Like dragons, you’ve become scarce.
I’m smoking less weed and drinking
more water.
There are creative ways of staying alive.
I’m not just talking
about the way my mouse
cleverly dodges the glue traps
with innovative routes around the stove.
We won’t finish these books
engrossing us, but we can
figure out the rest.
Genie
Grant me three wishes,
but also time to waste.
Light-years from here,
when earth’s topmost layer
has all but disintegrated,
she’ll no longer feel
she must apologize
for spark and splendor.
We’ll stumble back
to a patch of grass
containing no meaning
outside of memory.
As for my first wish,
give her the remaining two.
