10 Aug in flux by Sage Enderton
too blonde too much stuff packed
into the back of your car. now
your dark hair is long and beautiful
strands curled up at the ends
ribbon on a gift
but there are more exams to study for
and poems to be written and some
holes to crawl into and die.
there will always be glasses of wine to drink—
will i drink them with you? there is
something stupid and sad and i want
even in the sad stupidity, to want.
there’s a shock collar around the neck
of my hometown. i saw you in a field
once or twice and all our eyes were clear.
there’s a beach somewhere
i whispered all the future mistakes i’d make
to the dunes. run into me on the street.
run me down like you mean it
with your shoe on the gas.
start saying hello instead of goodbye.
do i ask enough questions?
for you to tell me all the answers?
can “for now” mean “again”?
About the Poet
photo credit Vicente Rondon
Sage Enderton is a truth-teller, vision-senser and thing-feeler from Buffalo, New York.
Enderton primarily works with poetics and visual collage, and doubles as a DJ. They independently produce zines, and have a long trail of writings published in Peach Mag, Ghost City Review, The Public, Tongue Tied Magazine, and many other magazines and journals. Their chapbook WHERE DO DEAD GIRLS WANDER? was published with Bottlecap Press in 2020.
Sage was one of the first youth participants in Just Buffalo Writing Center when it was created in 2014. They were in the 8th grade and continued to attend JBWC workshops nearly every week until they graduated from City Honors High School. Whether writing made-to-order poems for donations at community events, welcoming new young writers into the JBWC, running writing activities, performing their work, or attending monthly meetings to plan events and programs, Sage became an active member of JBWC community working as Youth Ambassador, which contributed greatly to the center’s success. Still a senior in high school, Just Buffalo hired Sage as the first student teaching artist, empowering them to lead their own writing workshops.
At Buffalo State University, Sage was a Writing B.A. major and was Head Editor of Buffalo State’s student-run literary magazine Portrait. You can find some of Sage’s zine work at the upcoming Buffalo Zinefest 2025 on August 16th at the Western New York Book Arts Center, and their work as a writer, collage artist, and DJ on Instagram at @skenderton, @steamedredbull, and @thereisabutcher.
The Poem of the Week feature is curated by literary legacy awardee R.D. Pohl.