rhythm his gravity, his
this could be life
stopped in motion
at my birth, severed
his guitar strings for
a latecomer degree
still, he sang to me all childhood
composing tender songs
eluding one dream for another
in the immigrant way, loyalty
exceeding a drumbeat
all so I could be benevolent
with pen ink
and intuition, find
funding to float
in a cloister of trees
often he asks
if I write poems about him and
I say no, words
are not enough, too hard
but what I mean is
there is too much aching here
and the music is too silent
Sarah Yanni is a Mexican-Egyptian poet in Los Angeles. She is the author of two chapbooks: Hard Crush (Wonder Press, 2024) and ternura / tenderness (Bottlecap Press, 2019). Her writing appears in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Mizna, SPECTRA Poets, Autostraddle, Full Stop, Wildness Journal, Iterant Mag, among others, and is anthologized in INFINITE CONSTELLATIONS (University of Alabama Press, ed. Khadijah Queen) and FUTURE/PRESENT (Duke University Press, ed. Elizabeth Webb). She has been recognized as a Finalist for BOMB Magazine’s Poetry Prize, Kelsey Street Press’ QTBIPOC Book Contest, the Andres Montoya Letras Latinas Poetry Prize, the Hayden’s Ferry Review Inaugural Poetry Prize, the Outpost Fellowship, and Poetry Online’s Launch Prize. A Best of the Net Nominee, she was a Finalist to be the Poet Laureate of Glendale, CA in 2023. She has received support from Community of Writers and the California Institute of the Arts. Formerly, she served as the Managing Editor of The Quarterless Review and Poetry Editor of The Dry River.