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O Poesy Romance Unmasked, a poem by Gerard Sarnat


O Poesy Romance Unmasked
by Gerard Sarnat

My wife, who once
was lost to another
man

gave me L.Cohen’s
82 years’ ordinary
notebooks

which read dreary like they
shouldn’t see the light of
day.

But underneath all that
chaff, I can begin to
winnow

then find what would become
Suzanne and Hallelujah
lucencies.

Brother Leonard’s determined
task to dress kōans for
success

was to find paths that
dance us to end of
love.


Gerard Sarnat won the Poetry in the Arts First Place Award plus the Dorfman Prize, has been nominated for Pushcarts and authored four collections: HOMELESS CHRONICLES (2010), Disputes (2012), 17s (2014), and Melting The Ice King (2016), which included work published by Oberlin, Brown, Columbia, Johns Hopkins and in Gargoyle, American Journal of Poetry (Margie), Main Street Rag, MiPOesias, New Delta Review, Brooklyn Review, Los Angeles Review of Books, Voices Israel, Tishman Review, Suisun Valley Review, Burningwood Review, Fiction Southeast, Junto, Tiferet, plus featured in New Verse News, Eretz, Avocet, LEVELER, tNY, StepAway, Bywords, Floor Plan, Good-Man-Project, Anti-Heroin-Chic, Poetry Circle, Fiction Southeast, Walt Whitman Tribute Anthology and Tipton Poetry Journal. For Huffington Post/other reviews, readings, publications, and interviews, visit GerardSarnat.com. Harvard/Stanford educated, Gerry’s worked in jails, built/staffed clinics for the marginalized, been a CEO and Stanford Med professor. Married for a half century, Gerry has three kids and four grandkids so far.