Sarah Lindsay

Sarah Lindsay Poems

Themiscyra, 72 BC

While Lucullus raided cherry orchards,
he left us to besiege,
grudgingly, this outlander fortress,
...

Krakatau split with a blinding noise
and raised from gutted, steaming rock
a pulverized black sky, over water walls
that swiftly fell on Java and Sumatra.
...

A sound of far-off thunder from instruments
ten feet away: drums, a log,
a gong of salvage metal. Chimes
...

The dog came back,
grinning and smelling of carrion,
and her husband behind it, stride and gestures
too large for the house. His field voice, cracking,
...

From the Mithridatic Wars,  first century BC

Our general was elsewhere, but we drowned.
While he rested, he shipped us home
...

When bones and flesh have finished their business together,
we lay them carefully, in positions they're willing to keep,
and cover them over.
Their eyes and ours won't meet anymore. We hope.
...

She's slicing ripe white peaches
into the Tony the Tiger bowl
and dropping slivers for the dog
poised vibrating by her foot to stop their fall
...

For RLB

Pass by the showy rose,
blabbing open,
suckling a shiny beetle;
...

They have left behind the established cave
with its well-worn floor. Scholarship impels them
in hundreds, but generally one by one,
...

Of Mina-sarpilili-anda II,
the only surviving record
is this splendid bas-relief in which
he presses the neck of his Hittite foe
...

No animals were harmed in the making of this joyful noise:
A thick, twisted stem from the garden
is the wedding couple's ceremonial ram's horn.
Its substance will not survive one thousand years,
...

Tell the bees. They require news of the house;
they must know, lest they sicken
from the gap between their ignorance and our grief.
Speak in a whisper. Tie a black swatch
...

Sarah Lindsay Biography

Sarah Lindsay (born 1958) is an American poet from Cedar Rapids, Iowa. In addition to writing the two chapbooks Bodies of Water and Insomniac's Lullabye, Lindsay has authored two books in the Grove Press Poetry Series: Primate Behavior (a National Book Award finalist) and Mount Clutter.[1] Her work has been featured in magazines such as The Atlantic, The Georgia Review, The Kenyon Review, The Paris Review, Parnassus, and Yale Review. Lindsay has been awarded with the J. Howard and Barbara M.J. Wood Prize. Her third book of poetry, Twigs and Knucklebones (Copper Canyon Press, 2008), was selected as a "Favorite Book of 2008" by Christian Wiman, editor of Poetry magazine. Her most recent book of poems is Debt to the Bone-Eating Snotflower (Copper Canyon Press, 2013) was a 2013 Lannan Literary Selection. Lindsay graduated from St. Olaf College with a B.A. in English and creative writing, and holds an M.F.A. in creative writing from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. She currently lives in Greensboro, North Carolina, and works as a copy editor at Pace Communications.)

The Best Poem Of Sarah Lindsay

Attack Underground

Themiscyra, 72 BC

While Lucullus raided cherry orchards,
he left us to besiege,
grudgingly, this outlander fortress,
named for an Amazon queen,
while thinking of food and home.
Not one of us has seen
a single horse-borne warrior woman.
Meanwhile, we dug a tomb.

We intended it as the tunnel
through which we'd claim the fort.
We shored up the sifting roof
and dug by lamps
that shed more shadows than light.
At last we formed up underground
to attack with sword and fire,
but the enemy tossed in hives,

and in a cloud of stinging bees
our torches jerked and swung or fell
so we could hardly tell
where to strike, or what, for next
our enemy sent weasels in, and foxes,
which seemed to be done in jest
until we felt their teeth
and heard, more than saw, the larger beasts.

A wolf  began my death.
I lay in men's and weasels' blood
and heard the body
that dropped at my side
ask, What barbarian thought to make
of thoughtless creatures weapons of war?
But a flung torch showed me the face
of a bear that said nothing, and died.
Then came the boar.

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