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simeonberry.bsky.social
Simeon Berry
@simeonberry.bsky.social
2K followers 1.7K following 1.5K posts
Author of Monograph (National Poetry Series, UGA Press) & Ampersand Revisited (National Poetry Series, Fence Books). Posts daily poems by others. he/him
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simeonberry.bsky.social
“In some languages the word for dream / is the same as for music // is the kind of thing poets like to say / to prove they’re on your side” —
@dobbygibson.bsky.social @parisreview.bsky.social @graywolfpress.bsky.social
SMALL CRAFT TALK. In some languages the word for dream is the same as for music is the kind of thing poets like to say to prove they’re on your side, but no one is on your side forever, not even a poet, although a poem can be, if it’s able to disarm you enough to submit to its peculiar logic, as if you’re hearing the song of your own mind sung into being so that you become yourself by becoming more like another self, like the friendly bank teller who became the bank’s greatest thief. he gave away his entire plunder to neighborhood children, so the judge who sentenced him to life couldn’t look the jury in the eyes as he retreated to his chambers to fold his black robe over his chair and sign his final decision. I’ve always wished life were different, which he left on his desk beneath a coin before climbing through the window and turning back into an owl. Dobby Gibson
February 9, 2026 at 1:50 PM
simeonberry.bsky.social
“I am riding with blind Borges in his sophisticated air-car thinking about Hilda who never married and was built to play nose tackle, who taught me a thing or three about Borges and Lorca and Lope de Vega whose name made me giddy” —Jim Daniels theglacierjournal.com/issue-two/ji...
Jim Daniels
The Glacier Issue TwoWinter 2023 MEETING THE BLIND BORGES Nothing is built on stone; all is built on sand, but we must build as if the sand were stone. Jimi Hendrix Borges The original is unfaithfu…
theglacierjournal.com
February 8, 2026 at 1:51 PM
simeonberry.bsky.social
“After my field commission, / I never lost another man. My grip / shook from deployment to the hop / home. Couldn’t give up / cigarettes after that.” —Kyle Dargan, “Edgar the Security Guard on Poetry”
EDGAR THE SECURITY GUARD ON POETRY. College Station, Texas. Smoked every brand out there. These, a dollar fifty, taste no different than the Benson & Hedges I gave years to. I am no hero, unlike the friends I buried over there. After my field commission, I never lost another man. My grip shook from deployment to the hop home. Couldn’t give up cigarettes after that. I’m sixty-seven and only read on the job. I need words that keep me sharp. This Welsh guy, he writes about combat in language that makes war sound like sheet music. There was no melody—I had to silence small shadows smuggling munitions for the g**ks. I did my duty, provided for a wife and seven kids. So, they wouldn’t give me rank until I went back to school. I had to read poetry. All the “thees” and “thous” and “flowers”—I’d fall asleep. I’ve never understood war, the need is just over my head. I like mysteries—Mosley’s good, but I’ll try this Song of Napalm. I knew fire, but it never sounded like music. Kyle Dargan
February 7, 2026 at 1:19 PM
simeonberry.bsky.social
“The last thing my father did for me
Was map a way: he died, & so
Made death possible. If he could do it, I
Will also, someday, be so honored.”
—Larry Levis, “In the City of Light”
@upittpress.bsky.social blackbird-archive.vcu.edu/v5n2/poetry/...
In the City of Light , Larry Levis
blackbird-archive.vcu.edu
February 6, 2026 at 12:30 PM
simeonberry.bsky.social
“I pictured them both in action, / underwater. Nancy’s legs wrapped around / its speeding shaft, her red eyes fixed like sniper / dots on the target ahead, a string of bubbles / flying out behind her like a chiffon scarf.” — @carolinebirduk.bsky.social, “Torpedo” @carcanet.bsky.social
NANCY AND THE TORPEDO. Nancy found an entire torpedo in the forest just lying there like a beached whale, coated in wet leaves and decorated with glittering snail trails. “It’s a fucking torpedo,” she said. “Is it... live?” I said. I didn’t know how torpedoes worked. Were they like mines? “It’s inert,” she said, suddenly an expert, “torpedoes don’t explode on land, everyone knows that.” She whistled like a plumber surveying a damp patch, “He’s a beauty alright. I reckon he weighs at least 600 pounds. 640, I’d say.” “He?” I said, but Nancy was already straddling it, spanking its rudder like the rump of a prize horse. “What’s a torpedo doing in a forest?” Nancy rolled her eyes. “You always ask the most obvious questions, don’t you? Can’t you just enjoy the moment?” She’d already unzipped her trousers and was touching herself, grinding up against the girth of the weapon and groaning gently. “Careful,” I said. Her orgasm gathered to a scream. She pressed her sweating face on the warhead and fell asleep on top of it. The torpedo precisely matched the length of her body. To my tired gaze, it seemed as if they were both breathing, Nancy and the torpedo, their chests rising and falling together like unsuspecting ocean waves. I pictured them both in action, underwater. Nancy’s legs wrapped around its speeding shaft, her red eyes fixed like sniper dots on the target ahead, a string of bubbles flying out behind her like a chiffon scarf. Eventually she woke, refreshed and cheerful, patted the torpedo goodbye, hoisted on her backpack and we continued our journey as if nothing had happened. “Where are we going?” she’d ask, every ten minutes or so. “We’ve just got to keep moving,” I’d reply, pointing in some arbitrary direction and striding with purpose, trying to channel the sexual energy of a self-propelled missile, “Keep on moving.” The dread swished around my gums like someone else’s tongue. If I had owned a penis it would have secretly shriveled in my pants. “We’ve passed this clearing before,” Nancy said. “Different clearing,” I said. “Those are our footprints from four days ago,” she said. “Different footprints,” I said. Then we saw the torpedo. Nancy laughed. “I suppose you’re going to tell me that’s a different torpedo?” It was getting dark and cold. “I love you. I just love you so much,” I said, as Nancy remounted, hugging it and whispering into its back, her mouth almost kissing the metal. That’s when I lost it. “I’M SORRY I’M NOT A FUCKING TORPEDO!” “I can’t... blast through shit I’m lost and I’m useless and I’ve got no fucking idea where I am or what I’m doing. There. I said it. Go ahead and dump me because I’m a piece of shit.” There was a long silence. Nancy straightened her spine like a dressage rider, looked at me for an age then said, “How many times do I have to prove it to you?” “Prove what?” I said. She sighed, “What could be more useless and impotent than a dud torpedo in a forest?” “I don’t understand,” I said. She peeled a snail from its propeller and threw it at me. “I know exactly who you are,” she said, slapping the steel, “you and him are headed in the same direction.” “You mean, nowhere?” She unzipped her trousers and reached down. Fat tears appeared on her cheeks like rain. I didn’t understand why she was crying. “You stupid idiot,” she said, her breath quickening as she rubbed and grinded, “Can’t you see I’m doing this for you? Can’t you see I’m exploding for the both of us?” Caroline Bird
February 5, 2026 at 12:35 PM
simeonberry.bsky.social
“I told him that a troop of angels had been shot and dissolved when they hit the ground. // He asked who had shot them and I said a farmer.” —David Berman, “Snow” poetrysociety.org/poems-essays...
New American Poets: David Berman
Work from first first books by some of today's most innovative and interesting poets. This series was presented biannually from 2003-2015.
poetrysociety.org
February 4, 2026 at 1:08 PM
simeonberry.bsky.social
“Hands shaking so—not from alcohol but fear of regret—they had to give you an illegal Valium so you could sign consent.” —Patricia Caspers @pitheadchapel.bsky.social pitheadchapel.com/please-pleas...
Please Please Please Please Please Stop Talking
Patricia Caspers You know the answer—or maybe you thought you knew the answer. You think of the guy in college everyone called monster breath, how he raised his hand as soon as the Hemingway story …
pitheadchapel.com
February 2, 2026 at 12:00 PM
simeonberry.bsky.social
“‘Are you all right,’ Duhaney asks me at the bar, / ‘You look like you just stepped on a nail.’ He bends / to my ear, ‘I have such a crush on you’” — @jamesallenhall.bsky.social, “Dirty Joke” www.greenlindenpress.com/issue17-jame...
Under a Warm Green Linden, Issue 17 — Green Linden Press
www.greenlindenpress.com
February 1, 2026 at 1:24 PM
simeonberry.bsky.social
“Near beer, / tight ends. / Night bends. / I know / it’s late / for a love game. // Which isn’t / sadness, / or freedom, / it’s a feeling / that precedes / feeling, a narcotic // urge” — @randallmann.bsky.social, “The Scene” @coppercanyonpress.bsky.social airlightmagazine.org/airlight/iss...
“In the Beginning,” "Containment,” “The Scene,” and “Poem Beginning With a Line by Wayne Koestenbaum” - Air/Light
Randall Mann is the author of five poetry collections, most recently A Better Life (Persea Books, 2021). He lives in San Francisco.
airlightmagazine.org
January 31, 2026 at 12:51 PM
simeonberry.bsky.social
“I meet Mrs. Pepitone by the frozen fish, dark circles / under her dark eyes. I tell her, If we had met 16 years earlier / in the dairy section perhaps, everything would have been different.” —Peter Meinke, “Supermarket” @upittpress.bsky.social
SUPERMARKET. My supermarket is bigger than your supermarket. That’s what America’s all about. Nowhere am I happier, nowhere am I more myself. In the supermarket, there you feel free. Listen: the carts roll on their oiled wheels, the cash register sings to the Sound of Music, the bagboys are unbearably polite! Everywhere there are lies, but in the supermarket we speak truth. The sallow young man by the cornstarch bumps my cart, I tell him, There are always two brothers. One is hardworking, serious. The other is good-looking but worthless; he drinks, he is a natural athlete, he seduces Priscilla Warren whom the older brother loves, and then abandons her. Yes, cries the sallow young man, O my god yes! Everywhere there are lies, I lie to my classes, I say, Eat this poem. Eat that poem. Good for you. I say, Sonnets have more vitamins than villanelles, I give green stamps for the most vivid images. But in the supermarket truth blows you over like a clearance sale. I meet Mrs. Pepitone by the frozen fish, dark circles under her dark eyes. I tell her, If we had met 16 years earlier in the dairy section perhaps, everything would have been different. Yes! Mrs. Pepitone cracks a Morton pie in her bare hands, lust floods the aisles, a tidal wave, everyone staring at everyone else with total abandon; Mr. Karakis is streaking through the cold cuts! Outside, the lies continue. We lie in church, we say Buy Jesus and you get Mary free. If you have faith you can eat pork, dollar a chop. We give plaid stamps for the purest souls. I meet Sue Morgan by the family-sized maxi-pads. Or is it mini-pads?—Or is it mopeds? In the supermarket everything sounds like everything else. I tell her, You can see azaleas even in the dark, the white ones glow like the eyes of angels. I tell her, Azaleas are the soul of the South, you kill all azaleas Jimmy Carter will shrivel like a truffle. Yes, she exclaims, Hallelujah! And still the lies pile up on the sidewalk, they’re storming the automatic doors. Mr. Hanratty the manager throws himself in front of the electronic beam, he knows this means he will be sterile forever, but the store comes first: the lies retreat to the First National Bank where they meet no resistance. Meanwhile, in the supermarket I am praising truth-in-advertising laws, I am trying to figure the exact price per ounce, the precise percentage of calcium propionate. And for you, my tenderest darling, to whom I always return laden with groceries, I bring Spaghetti-O’s and chocolate kisses, I tip whole shelves into my cart, the bag boys turn pale at my approach, they do isometric exercises. But I know this excess is unnecessary, I say, My friends, think Small, use the 8-item line, who needs more than 8 items? All you really need is civility, honesty, courage, and 5 loaves of wheatberry bread. Listen friends, Life is no rip-off, the oranges are full of juice, their coloring the best we can do, why do you think we live so long? So long. My dear friends, the supermarket is open. Let us begin. Peter Meinke
January 30, 2026 at 12:32 PM
simeonberry.bsky.social
“A house with a screened-in porch
On the road to nowhere.
The missus topless because of the heat,
A bag of Frito Banditos in her lap.”
—Charles Simic, “Pastoral Harpsichord”
PASTORAL HARPSICHORD. A house with a screened-in porch On the road to nowhere. The missus topless because of the heat, A bag of Frito Banditos in her lap. President Bush on TV Watching her every bite. Poor reception, that’s the one Advantage we have here, I said to the mutt lying at my feet And sighing in sympathy. On another channel the preacher Came chaperoned by his ghost When he shut his eyes full of tears To pray for dollars, “Bring me another beer,” I said to her ladyship, And when she wouldn’t oblige, I went out to make chamber music Against the sunflowers in the yard. Charles Simic
January 29, 2026 at 12:38 PM
simeonberry.bsky.social
“Nothing / can be relied upon but the disappointment / of beer.” — @biancatherosestone.bsky.social, “The Human Good” @tinhouse.bsky.social
THE HUMAN GOOD. Human nature tries to weave the naked cloth of saints so thin it barely feels it. Our nature is tired of looking for meaning. It wants to go indoors. Watch some television. Sleep on the couch covered in little sharp crumbs. Our nature tries to establish the right boundaries. Tries to make some S.M.A.R.T. goals. Only gets fatter. Poorer. Nothing can be relied upon but the disappointment of beer. The parables of wealth. And human nature can’t even stop to examine progress. Because by now it is trying something new. (Human nature is always moving on to the next big thing. Meanwhile, life thunders along. With no clear purpose. No end in sight. We settle in to read aloud the linguistic eloquence of obscure contemporary fucking poetry. The pitfalls Descartes’s dualism. The anarchy of flesh. The anxiety of goodness. This will give us some idea of what’s to come, we say confidently, gathering around ourselves the magazines of cutting-edge sorrow, of effort, of words. Surely this is it. Bianca Stone
January 28, 2026 at 1:53 PM
simeonberry.bsky.social
“I want to step into Beethoven’s filthy apartment with the pizza / boxes stacked on the floor and listen to him pound / his piano into splinters. I want to be the splinters and the pain / in his gut that becomes the opening of his Fifth.” —Barbara Hamby, “Want Ode” @upittpress.bsky.social
WANT ODE. I want to walk into a drug store and buy all the bumblebees made between 1960 and now because I’m not feeling perky today or any day, my body like an eighteen-wheeler that hauls orange juice from Florida to Milwaukee in January, skidding into Toyotas and Kias, flattening them like the flies that circle my head and drink from the cup of my eyes but I want to be those flies buzzing like a fire alarm at 3am, my brain blazing and my body following like a hungry dog, walking through a city where I don’t speak the language, every word a slap in the face or an invitation to a party in a deserted mansion where the dictator beheads the poet, and his wife stabs him in his bath, eats blood oranges and weeps. I want to swim across the Bosphorus with Byron, to be his club foot and the ink in his pen as he writes Don Juan, I want to be the craggy Armenian verbs he is breaking his mind against on the island of San Lazaro in Venice, the mornings of fog over the lagoon. I want to be the bread he tears with his teeth, the fever raging through his veins at Missolonghi, because there is only luck to explain why I am still here and not in some kind of jail with a dark-haired daughter who loathes me even more than I loathe myself. I am roaming the outer edges of my own mind, and I want to bury my thoughts in the dark corridors of my dreams, break through the ghosts of my dead, like sheets on the line outside our house when I was ten. I want to be a cat with a tail that curls around my feet, who goes out wilding every night with an orange tom, a scar across his nose, who takes me to the juke joints with deep dirty blues and drinks so rough I wake up with my voice two octaves lower than when I went to bed with Etta James in my throat. I want to step into Beethoven’s filthy apartment with the pizza boxes stacked on the floor and listen to him pound his piano into splinters. I want to be the splinters and the pain in his gut that becomes the opening of his Fifth. I want to be the immortal beloved, to smell your body when I first knew you wanted me, that same yeasty pong that drove me mad with desire, because I want to stop time, start time, make time, pass time, want to blow my past to smithereens and still remember everything in Technicolor detail, so I’m asking when will this wanting stop, why is it like the stars above as we walk along the Tevere, Rome stretched out in all her dark glory, while we talk about Caravaggio and Keats, the razzamatazz which gathers luster in the vast fields of sleep. I want to dream and never wake, run and never stop, spin my top along the edge of swoon, walk with the street corner gods, singing their sideshow songs that fuel the endless night. Barbara Hamby
January 27, 2026 at 2:10 PM
simeonberry.bsky.social
“Cutouts, cutups, ambushes, / bushwackers. MC Mnemosyne shows up / around midnight like the undetectable dew // weighing down the leaves” —Terrance Hayes poets.org/poem/crying-...
For Crying Out Loud
And I understand well now, it is beautiful
poets.org
January 26, 2026 at 12:56 PM
simeonberry.bsky.social
“through the windshield at the distant galaxies,/enjoying my tacos with extra hot sauce,/thinking about the dolphins out there in the ocean/worrying about me, wasting their healing energy/on someone who was merely eating tacos in a Cleveland parking lot” —George Bilgere, Jazz @upittpress.bsky.social
JAZZ. So the jazz quartet sounded OK at first, as I sat at my table with my beer, and then I thought, this isn’t really working for me, it’s more like a post-bebop, kneejerk rejection of melody in favor of a glib but ultimately hollow dissonance, but nonetheless I was nodding my head in affirmation, and I did feel rather hip, being one of the few white people there, and then the set was over and I finished my beer and walked out under the stars, suddenly hungry. There was a Taco Bell just down the street and soon I was sitting in my car in the parking lot with three hard-shelled tacos and a Coke, listening to a woman on a late night call-in show talking about the healing power of dolphins, which are actually like angels: they love us and are here to save and protect us. And I looked through the windshield at the distant galaxies, enjoying my tacos with extra hot sauce, thinking about the dolphins out there in the ocean worrying about me, wasting their healing energy on someone who was merely eating tacos in a Cleveland parking lot. I hoped they would give me credit for sitting in the jazz club, struggling with difficult music and the challenges of the avant-garde, and also, in a small way, doing my part to break down racial barriers. If dolphins were as large-spirited as this woman claimed, there was no way they’d penalize me for occasionally being less than noble and high-minded. Even dolphins must have their equivalent of eating tacos alone in a midnight parking lot, although I can’t imagine what that might be. George Bilgere
January 25, 2026 at 2:04 PM
simeonberry.bsky.social
“I thought I would be a wealthy, functional-alcoholic lawyer, / but I ended up being a poor sober person // working in a copy shop downtown, / trying to do a good job with the hole puncher / and the binding machine.” —Tony Hoagland, “Great Expectations”
GREAT EXPECTATIONS. Charlie thought he would become a professional soccer player, but he wound up being a cancer patient instead. Elizabeth thought she would be an important abstract painter, but she wound up becoming a spokesperson for the Proud Parents of Gay Children Coalition. You don’t know how things will turn out. You don’t even notice how they have turned out after they have turned out that way. If a stranger gave you a Chinese fortune cookie one afternoon, and you broke open that delicate little pastry shell and extracted the slip of paper and it said, You will be an unusually young widow living in an apartment in Sarasota, Florida, lonely but too proud to get a cat, you would toss it away without a second thought. I thought I would be a wealthy, functional-alcoholic lawyer, but I ended up being a poor sober person working in a copy shop downtown, trying to do a good job with the hole puncher and the binding machine. One day my college professor came into the store with a chapter from her manuscript on Faulkner in her hand. You were so talented! she said. Tony Hoagland
January 24, 2026 at 2:01 PM
simeonberry.bsky.social
“Of course love like anything begins in fire / and ends in an attic. It falls to earth in a new human body, and goes out among people / pretending to know how to tie its shoes, use a salad fork.” —Jeff Whitney, “A Chapter on Love” www.greenlindenpress.com/issue17-jeff...
Under a Warm Green Linden, Issue 17 — Green Linden Press
www.greenlindenpress.com
January 23, 2026 at 12:51 PM
simeonberry.bsky.social
“when you first realized / your body couldn’t be trusted / to take care of you. / Maybe the first kiss, that boy / with a penknife, or maybe / what came after” —Rebecca Hazelton, “The Husband as Mentalist” @adroitjournal.bsky.social @lsupress.bsky.social theadroitjournal.org/issue-twenty...
Issue Twenty-Seven: Rebecca Hazelton | The Adroit Journal
Visit the post for more.
theadroitjournal.org
January 22, 2026 at 12:59 PM
simeonberry.bsky.social
“‘I will kiss in the morning
Your mouth which will be red and thick
After sleep.’ She has left me
For a banker she met in the gardens.
The gas-jets are on: they are
Like fountains of the best water.”
—Norman Dubie, “Monologue of Two Moons, Nudes with Crests: 1938” @upittpress.bsky.social
MONOLOGUE OF TWO MOONS, NUDES WITH CRESTS: 1938. Once, Lily and I fell from a ladder And startled the white geese that were Concealed in the shadows of the house, and I wrote much later that the geese Broke from the shadows like handkerchiefs Out of the sleeves of black dresses At a burial. When the matron was sick It was work to carry the powders On blue paper and the clear water With a spoon into her large, cold room. In the evenings we would look out At the spruce trees. It was wrong to have Visitors. It was wrong those clear nights To remember that boys were out on the hills Falling onto sleds or into their gray baskets. We were two young girls with black hair And the white cones Of our breasts. Lily said, “I will put My hand, here, on you and follow the rib, and You can put your hand, here, on me, Up the inside of my leg.” We spent that Christmas morning pressing Satin skirts for the boys’ choir. We take Butter away from the closet. We take the lamp away from the green Cadaverous child who is not ours. I have a little violin pupil who eats Bread in cream. We love the details mice leave in flour. The way the clouds Are low like before a storm in early summer. Lily slept with a Jew once in Vienna. I opened my hand that morning On a milk-jug that had frozen and cracked On the doorstep. Yesterday, I saw the perfect impression Of a bee in asphalt. It was under a shade tree. Lily said, “I will kiss in the morning Your mouth which will be red and thick After sleep.” She has left me For a banker she met in the gardens. The gas-jets are on: they are Like fountains of the best water. I am Remembering the vertical action of two birds Building a nest. It’s in Munich and Both birds are dark and crested, But the female, I think, is the one whose Nesting materials are all wet things: Twigs, leaves and an infinite black string. Norman Dubie
January 21, 2026 at 12:32 PM
simeonberry.bsky.social
“The lost dog won’t let me tether it. // Our neighbor strips on his porch, / out of his mind. // The monarch with the deformed wing / does not live happily among the zinnias / like I promised the children.” —Sarah Green @sixthfinch.bsky.social @uakronpress.bsky.social sixthfinch.com/sgreen7.html
Sixth Finch - Summer 2024 - Sarah Green - FORESHADOWING
Sixth Finch - Summer 2024 - Sarah Green - FORESHADOWING
sixthfinch.com
January 20, 2026 at 12:32 PM
simeonberry.bsky.social
“she sat twiddling a last hexahedron of ice / watering the gin in her Life’s a Beach! coffee mug. // Down cellar, a mild-mannered roach / checked into a homicidal motel.” — @jaswinderbolina.bsky.social, “A Film Noir for Joseph Stiglitz” @coppercanyonpress.bsky.social
A FILM NOIR FOR JOSEPH STIGLITZ. She’d wearied of the gruff interrogations and pithy rejoinders, had answered twice every dick combing the manor, so she sat twiddling a last hexahedron of ice watering the gin in her Life’s a Beach! coffee mug. Down cellar, a mild-mannered roach checked into a homicidal motel. Everyone she’d ever known had settled in for an evening of Netflix and edibles, and earthquakes were more common than sex in the dry county that year, which is why she took hold of the lieutenant’s nape like a candlestick telephone, pulled his hard-boiled ear in close, and murmured. Because who would miss a dead supply-side macroeconomist lying like a shadow on a rug in the leather and varnished interior of his Victorian study? Jaswinder Bolina
January 19, 2026 at 2:49 PM
simeonberry.bsky.social
“Spanish has a saying for wanting / to prove what needs not. // You’re just trying to make the water wet. / Suppose I am / sick of being a woman, each / word of us read aloud // like a 19th century letter / to rooms of distant relatives.” —Jenny Browne atlengthmag.com/he-would-alw...
He Would Always Love Painting More
atlengthmag.com
January 18, 2026 at 1:29 PM
simeonberry.bsky.social
n one of the last days I told him. You know how much you love Joe? / That’s how much I love you. And he said, No. And I said, Yes. // And he said, No.” —Marie Howe, “One of the Last Days”
ONE OF THE LAST DAYS. As through a door in the air that I stepped through sideways before reaching for a plate high in the cupboard I find myself in the middle of my life: May night, raining, Michael just gone to Provincetown, James making music next door, lilacs in full bloom, sweet in the dark rain of Cambridge. On one of the last days I told him. You know how much you love Joe? That’s how much I love you. And he said, No. And I said, Yes. And he said, No. And I said, You know it’s true. And he closed his eyes for a minute. When he opened them he said, Maybe you’d better start looking for somebody else. Marie Howe
January 17, 2026 at 1:04 PM
simeonberry.bsky.social
“regardless I become a lesbian from Kamchatka / bursting through the diamonds of my waxy fronds / as through burning glass” —Jane Miller, “Wrought Iron” @coppercanyonpress.bsky.social
WROUGHT IRON. The sun scorches the dusty leaves of New Jersey. probably all this takes place in July, because the lime trees are in bloom. regardless I become a lesbian from Kamchatka, bursting through the diamonds of my waxy fronds as through burning glass. the sun brands the nuclear family to his and her recliners in the den until they’re skeletons. Jane Miller
January 16, 2026 at 12:36 PM
simeonberry.bsky.social
“My friend guided me; / he thought because I drank often / I drank well. / He thought I might be looking / for subtleties, as he was. / My vocabulary was ‘good’ / and ‘not so good.’ / I was usually a drinker / looking for a mood.” —Stephen Dunn, “Aging”
AGING. I tasted and spat as the experts did so I could taste again. I put my nose in. I cleansed my palate with bread. My friend guided me; he thought because I drank often I drank well. He thought I might be looking for subtleties, as he was. My vocabulary was “good” and “not so good.” I was usually a drinker looking for a mood. We moved among the oak barrels and private reserves the fine talk of the serious performing their delicate mysterious craft. Yet about the art of aging I found myself indifferent nothing to say or ask. We went outside, walked among the woody vines and fleshy, often violet, sometimes green, prodigal, smooth-skinned grapes. The day was beautiful. My friend was happy, sated. There’s never enough, I thought. There never can be enough. Stephen Dunn
January 15, 2026 at 12:30 PM