Poem By Sarah Lang

Eyewear is very pleased to welcome the Canadian poet Sarah Lang (pictured) to its pages this Friday. Lang (one wants to say "out on parole"), according to Wikipedia, shares her name with "a game show winner" and was born in 1980. In the spring of 2004, she completed her MFA at Brown University. She began work on her PhD in Chicago in the fall of 2005.

Her work, which includes poetry, prose, personal, critical and medical esssays, has been published in Canada, Great Britian, and the United States. She has translated work from Latin, Ancient Greek, French, Ukrainian, Japanese, and Mandarin. Her first poetry collection (recently out), from which the text below is an excerpt, is The Work Of Days, from Coach House Books. She's one of the future directions of contemporary Canadian poetry.

from Videos in Montreal

Admittedly, there are ends. I no longer wanted. There are ways
to sign season, home; a body is not tender. I knew change; no,

things grow where they will. To what use? You mimed
movement with the skill of one who has moved. A snail

without shell bruises and bruises easily. Our house is thin,
flat flesh. I never could have swallowed all expectations,

or yours. You were the first instance. Where fall
flames, that is flowers, your bones like the trees

are a new season. A chest blooms with demands.
A body is erstwhile in its delicate, radiant finery.

---

The city has drawn a blank. How big
you are; a tarmac in the cool summer.

You pretend to love them all. Let
is a word like a creek in spring.

We are strangers; there are ways
to lie. There are trees, there are

trees, there are trees. The wind
does many things. A Hungarian sign

is not unlike your mouth. I never claimed
gravity, strength. From the left, a cot

has great significance. Like the city
we squeeze in tight for a photograph.

poem by Sarah Lang