Coiled and Swallowed, Driving Downtown to the Show, and Slip Away

By Sara Crawford

Coiled and Swallowed

 

A collection of personal poems that weave together a collage of moments--from an ode to carpet to a fantastical friendship with a vampire to chronicles of a first love now broken. This is a collection that will speak to the young, the inspired, the traveled, and the wise.

 

"Sara Crawford's confessional poems capture youth in a way that's delicate, authentic, and will break your heart." - Amelia Cook, Black Heart Magazine

 

"A young writer who has a burgeoning voice that is altogether recognizable with a touch of Southern charm." - Virgogray Press

Driving Downtown to the Show
 

Inspired by the Atlanta music scene of the early 2010s, Driving Downtown to the Show is an eclectic collection of poems that captures the essence of a young musician's life--from a pantoum about an overdose to odes to mix CDs to moments spent daydreaming at the coffee shop. Every poem in this collection features the name of a band that played in Atlanta venues in 2011, and a profound love of music is captured throughout.

Slip Away
 

Slip Away is a collection of poems about loss--the loss of a beloved pet, the loss of grandparents, the loss of relationships, the loss of childhood, and the loss of dreams. As we explore the different kinds of loss in these poems, eventually we discover that loss is merely an illusion.

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sara Crawford
• Release date: Mar 23, 2021
• ISBN: 9781393736318

Sara Crawford

Sara Crawford is an author, a playwright, and a musician. Ever since she was five years old, she has lived for art in one form or another. This manifested itself as writing plays at age eight and convincing (forcing) the neighborhood kids to perform them on her driveway, auditioning for Atlanta Ballet's The Nutcracker three years in a row before finally landing a small role as a toy soldier, starting an all-girl band in high school, writing and producing her own plays and short films, and most recently, writing a YA trilogy about a girl who falls in love with her Muse (THE MUSE CHRONICLES). Sara has been an actress, a singer, a playwright, a songwriter, a guitarist, a keyboard player, a poet, a screenwriter, and an author of both fiction and non-fiction. She graduated in 2008 from Kennesaw State University with a B.A. in English and in 2012 from the University of New Orleans with an M.F.A. in Creative Writing (emphasis in Playwriting). She has taught creative writing courses for Southern New Hampshire University, and she has been in numerous bands in Atlanta, including Pocket the Moon. She also loves to talk about books, music, and writing on her YouTube channel and talks art and creativity on her new podcast, Find Creative Expression. For more information visit http://saracrawford.net or https://www.youtube.com/user/saracrawford.

Book preview

Three Collections of Poems

by

Sara Crawford

Contents

Coiled and Swallowed

Introduction

Spinning

Ode to Carpet

Three Hours to Memphis

Sunrise

I Hope Vampires Like Loud Music

Break

Jigsaw Puzzles

Flask

Suburban Evening

Flickering

Green

Music Theory

For Frank

It's Not Important

To the Dancer

The Novelist

Visiting

Dreaming

Envy

Georgia June Outside of a Coffee Shop

It's Over

Roots

Bullfighting

Cement Steps

Music

Driving Downtown to the Show

Introduction

Driving Mixy #1: The ‘Songs That Actually Mention Driving’ Mixy

hip to death

Frozen Tundra

Mood Rings

The Future of Airports

The February Stretch

Driving Mixy #2: The ‘Best of Jump Little Children’ Mixy

Idle

Rabbits

Ignored

Ghost Party

Small Talk: Define Who You Are in Ten Seconds or Less

Sundays

She Doesn’t Remember

Driving Mixy #3: The ‘Moonlight Bride Album Re-Ordered so the First Two Tracks Come Last’ Mixy

At Cool Beans #1: Barista

EADGBe

The Art of Being Alone

Long Absent Friends

Bonding with Dad

At Cool Beans #2: Behind the Railroad Tracks

Warren and Rachel

Unconscious

Double Life

Driving Mixy #4: The ‘Driving Downtown to the Show By Myself’ Mixy

Burn

Contagious

Re-Invent the Moon

Band Names

Slip Away

Introduction

Dusk

Echoes

Discovery of Potential

Your House

The Stranger

Roadblock

David Bowie

Here

Limitless

Grandma’s Treats

Ode to Melancholy British Rock Songs

Water Park

Lost Boys

Glimpse

Under the Stars

Phoenix

Slip Away

The Light

Coiled and Swallowed

––––––––

A book of poems by

Sara Crawford

Copyright © 2010 Sara Crawford

All rights reserved.

For Michael

recollected in tranquility.

Introduction

This collection was originally published when I was 25 years old in 2010. It is a collection of personal and confessional poems that I wrote mostly between 2007 and 2010. These poems encapsulate what the experience of my early twenties was like. Even the poems that are fictional or a blend of truth and fantasy are accurate in terms of feeling, tone, and voice.

Spinning

Westerners are fleeing war-torn Lebanon,

CNN.com broke the news to me this morning,

Christians are talking about the end of our days,

Suddenly, I have become estranged.

CNN.com broke the news to me this morning,

My outstretched hand longs to communicate.

Suddenly, I have become estranged.

My head spins with thoughts of you.

My outstretched hand longs to communicate,

The particles between us are on fire.

My head spins with thoughts of you,

floating through this town, separated by wheels and glass.

The particles between us are on fire.

I look away for fear of the urgency of now,

floating through this town, separated by wheels and glass.

Tonight, I'll close my eyes, but sleep won't come.

I look away for fear of the urgency of now.

Christians are talking about the end of our days.

Tonight, I'll close my eyes, but sleep won't come.

Westerners are fleeing war-torn Lebanon.

Ode to Carpet

Lying on a sea of

tiny fabric worms,

an island surrounded

by wrinkled clothes,

scattered books,

and classic rock albums.

It's an ugly shade, somewhere

in between

off-white and brown.

The cats have shredded a patch.

It tries to emerge so

I push it back down with my toe.

My hand slides across

stains of coffee and red wine.

Your worn pieces

provide little comfort

from the stone foundation

underneath.

I remember you from nap time,

awake in a classroom,

staring at blue paint,

counting the knots in my shoelaces.

One, two, three.

You brush against the goosebumps

on my arms

as I recreate snow angels

in different shades.

Three Hours to Memphis

It’s the old diner at 3:00 in the morning.

Sipping coffee when that old song comes

on the jukebox,

and the waitress with the Marilyn dress

and the long, red curls

smiles at me through her red lipstick.

Packing up fragments in

the back seat of the teal 1954 Bel Air

and now I’m gone.

Yellow and white lines

on black pavement

zooming beside me

along with billboards, gas stations,

boiled peanut stands,

and a warehouse with a neon sign that reads

FIREWORKS

illuminating the sky.

And I listen to that same old song

the entire three hours

to the golden streets of Memphis.

Shoo bop do bee doo wap

Shoo bop do bee doo wap.

Oh, how I miss

white milk shakes with the