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We Are Jack Kerouac

Sarah Sarai

railroad tracks
expanse / e.m.

Though not in the sense
we were born in Lowell Mass
or beat it out of there to
get famous, though we
gassed up and burned rubber
in Lowell Mass and in
other states and cities
we hitched rides and smoked
cigarettes on route 66 and
interstate 90 and on weed
and acid on a crazy-eight-
curlicue of L.A. freeways
merging like a concrete Möbius
swapping out autos so on
Thanksgiving-Friday in
nineteen seventy something
we knew that sensory swirl
would be ours, daily everlasting;
in the daily everlasting we’d
lean into endless curves,
and though laws of identity
have things equal to themselves,
i.e., Jack = Jack, there’s
the poetic corollary that things
are equal to much that’s feral
and so beautiful, like our
holy transfixion on birds
thrumming wings in
the blue guitar of dreams.
But truly we’re Jack Kerouac
when morning light catches
now our thrumming adventures,
embarked on long ago.

This poem was first published in Sarah Sarai’s poetry collection, The Future is Happy, BlazeVOX[books], 2009.
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Sarah Sarai

Sarah's poems have appeared in Boston Review, Threepenny Review, POOL, Pank, and others; in anthologies including Say It Loud: Poems About James Brown (Whirlwind); Maintenant: A Journal of Contemporary Dada Writing & Art (Three Rooms Press); and Gathered (Sundress) (forthcoming). Her poetry collection, The Future is Happy, was published by BlazeVOX[books]. She also writes fiction.

Author: Sarah Sarai Tags: Beat Generation, Jack Kerouac, poetry Category: Poetry October 14, 2012

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Comments

  1. Jeff Wright says

    June 22, 2015 at 6:47 am

    A Jack a Day!!! Great starburst rhapsody of fast-paced, cosmic, haute lyric spew! Nice going, Sarah.

    Reply

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Empty Mirror

Established in 2000 and edited by Denise Enck, Empty Mirror is an online literary magazine that publishes new work each Friday.

Each week EM features several poems each by one or two poets; reviews; critical essays; visual art; and personal essays.

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