Gerard Sarnat’s recently been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. He’s authored four collections: HOMELESS CHRONICLES (2010), Disputes (2012), 17s (2014) and Melting The Ice King (2016) which included work published in Gargoyle, Lowestoft, American Journal of Poetry, Main Street Rag, New Delta Review, Tishman Review plus was featured in New Verse News, Songs of Eretz, Avocet, LEVELER, tNY, StepAway, Bywords, Floor Plan. Dark Run, Scarlet Leaf, Good Men Project, Anti-Heroin Chic, Winamop, Poetry Circle, and Tipton Review feature sets of new poems. “Amber Of Memory” was the single poem chosen for his 50th college reunion symposium on Bob Dylan; the Harvard Advocate accepted a second. Mount Analogue selected Sarnat’s sequence, KADDISH FOR THE COUNTRY, for distribution as a pamphlet in Seattle on Inauguration Day 2017 as well as the next morning as part of the Washington DC and nationwide Women’s Marches. Harvard/Stanford educated, Gerry’s worked in jails, built/staffed clinics for the marginalized, been a CEO of healthcare organizations and Stanford Medical School professor. Married since 1969, he has three children, four grand kids.

How colorblind is too colorblind?

Frozen murky tundra of a Chicago winter, seems every jerk
on State Street x-rays through layers of glittery gay clothing
to gaze at my “made wrong” non-normative thwarted body
whose slightly skeptical yellowish mandible and maxilla
treat all-you-eat buffets like supermarkets before blizzards.

Though paranoia can’t make ivories speak truth about what
tick-tocks in gray headspaces, each one’s own way throws shade
on me: allies of convenience, some place Southside redline
liens, others garnish paychecks while more wanton dud/esses
pitch in to nail moi’s pale flesh to that invisible green doorpost.

[image: Satokie Nagata | Lights in Chicago]