Simeon Berry
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simeonberry.bsky.social
Simeon Berry
@simeonberry.bsky.social
2K followers 1.6K following 1.4K 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
“betraying / their own brothers and stepping in front / of trains that have come loose / from their tracks and instead of brakes / have two sad faced women / waving kerchiefs” — @rebeccaslehmann.bsky.social, “Two Lovers” @southernreview.bsky.social @upittpress.bsky.social
TWO LOVERS. In one story we are two lovers scrambling up the banks of the Rhine a river I’ve never been to that I’ve read stories about in the way working class people read stories of the affluent vacationing and fucking and betraying their own brothers and stepping in front of trains that have come loose from their tracks and instead of brakes have two sad faced women waving kerchiefs from the railing of an old caboose. The thing with rivers is they crook and bend sometimes they are tidal and I have spent a lot of time writing about them. I thought our lives would crook and bend but mostly they are just the day to day which you excel at and I am bad at. A woman wants to meet me in Chicago. A train is waiting for me. I chase it down the tracks use my kerchief to catch the railing of the caboose to hoist myself onto the little balcony. The woman is already there disappointed in me. My son my daughter two sad faces in the caboose’s back windows. Say we are climbing the banks of the Rhine. This poem a spiral, repetition with progress. I hand you a glass of chilled beer make apologies for things I can’t control. Next time, I whisper, I will be a naked beauty a face carved in a rocky cliff the answer to a question you haven’t asked yet. Rebecca Lehmann
November 11, 2025 at 1:38 PM
simeonberry.bsky.social
“Butch. / A monocle / dangled / in her razored // neckline; / she saw us all / for what / we were— // not a lick. / Sick / of suspect / looks, // of plague, / I walked / Paynes Prairie” @randallmann.bsky.social The Summer of 1996 @coppercanyonpress.bsky.social www.cortlandreview.com/issue-87/ran...
Randall Mann (@randallmann.bsky.social)
SF. Poet ‪@coppercanyonpress.bsky.social‬. Faculty ‪@benningtonwriting.bsky.social‬. 💜
randallmann.bsky.social
November 10, 2025 at 2:32 PM
simeonberry.bsky.social
“Why crash the party on the astral plane? You’ll just be too tired to go to the real party later. Have you ever eaten Swedish meatballs at a dream party? They taste like your blanket because they are your blanket.” —Richard Siken @coppercanyonpress.bsky.social readwildness.com/38/siken-tab...
Tablecloth, by Richard Siken | wildnesswildness
Wildness is an online literary and arts journal.
readwildness.com
November 9, 2025 at 2:07 PM
simeonberry.bsky.social
“Inside, I sit beside a plaster bust of Walt Whitman / who celebrated all sorts of men and women // but especially Peter Doyle who drove a streetcar / and sported an extremely attractive scar.” —Ron Koertge, “Waiting for the Library to Open” @redhenpress.bsky.social
WAITING FOR THE LIBRARY TO OPEN. A man in a black hat stands off to one side. Ill at ease, he makes enough smoke to calm bees. Someone scolds her phone, “If you don’t love me, why did you talk about how things might be?” Cars speed past celebrating love on the rocks. A young woman defiantly pulls up her faded socks. When the enormous door finally swings open, we enter cautiously, like people at the ocean. Inside, I sit beside a plaster bust of Walt Whitman who celebrated all sorts of men and women but especially Peter Doyle who drove a streetcar and sported an extremely attractive scar. Some days Walt would bring dandelion wine and accompany Peter to the end of the line, every atom of him thinking of the evening ahead—bathwater running, the blue suit crumpled on the bed. Ron Koertge
November 8, 2025 at 2:00 PM
simeonberry.bsky.social
“the night is dark and the knife / is dark, and Walt Whitman loves me, / Walt walks down to the sea and my / Edwardian earrings are of no help / to him now” —Mary Ruefle, “Hold that Thought” @ampoetryreview.bsky.social
HOLD THAT THOUGHT. I sit sometimes in the dark, and for that you will think I am selfish, I live in the dark and I work in the dark, I eat in the dark, I am writing this without light, but one thing I will not do is love you in the dark. To all ye who sleep, it is raining in the alley, I hear the laughter turn into an argument, the world is saturated and full of misty tricks, I am perhaps myself a misty trick of the dark and for that you will think I am no one, you can dream of the potato blight if you want, the night is dark and the knife is dark, and Walt Whitman loves me, Walt walks down to the sea and my Edwardian earrings are of no help to him now, he goes in, toothless, hairless, and without rings our feelings will never be identified, he expectorates into the sea and his spit gives off a faint blue light like that of the moon, everything he does he does in order to see, he likes looking at the world, why not, born into a body like that, a body that is lonely and scared and probably angry, but it is his body and he loves it to the extent of the Mongol Empire, just as I love yours, hold that thought I have finally spoken—I love you more than George Sand loved Alfred de Musset, I love you more than George Sand loved Pietro Pagello, I love you more than George Sand loved Frédéric Chopin, it makes the brain swell, it is dark in there, the cells die by the hundreds, they die by the thousands, it could be Abe Lincoln’s war, every creature crawling all over the planet has one, yours can walk down to the sea, yours can go in, have you ever thought about standing naked in the rain like Walt did, it is dark but not too late, it is raining in the alley, Bob Dylan isn’t a big talker but he looked at everything real close for an hour, your own mother has a picture of you in her wallet, even if you are asleep I bet you’re not dreaming of that. Mary Ruefle
November 7, 2025 at 2:19 PM
simeonberry.bsky.social
“My hunch is that Sylvia Plath was not / Especially fun company. A drama queen, thin-skinned, / And skittery, she thought her poems were ordinary.“ —Terrance Hayes, “American Sonnet for My Past and Future Assassin” www.newyorker.com/magazine/201...
“American Sonnet for My Past and Future Assassin”
“It began with all the poetry weirdos & worriers, warriors, / Poetry whiners & winos falling from ship bows, sunset / Bridges & windows.”
www.newyorker.com
November 6, 2025 at 12:45 PM
simeonberry.bsky.social
“You don’t have to know how to live // It keeps happening either way // This morning on my walk I bypassed the cemetery in favor of the banks // They are all over downtown and very beautiful” — @heatherchristle.bsky.social, “Aubade” @southernreview.bsky.social
AUBADE. You don’t have to know how to live. It keeps happening either way. This morning on my walk I bypassed the cemetery in favor of the banks. They are all over downtown and very beautiful. The sign with the lion whose mane falls like water. We bought a house and the lion owns our mortgage. When things get too beautiful I need an emergency trepanation so my brain does not crush itself against my skull. The next bank was beautiful too. Their sign said our hours have changed. Tell me about it!. This was a rhetorical thought. The clouds were not rhetorical. They were actual and pink. At the last minute I could not resist the cemetery. The sign said enjoy your visit and I did that a lot. When the dead come in the sign tries to make them laugh. I thought the streetlamps were the moon repeatedly. I walked on in light of my mistakes. Heather Christle
November 5, 2025 at 12:15 PM
simeonberry.bsky.social
“you turning to ask / if I know who Brodsky is / as if Brodsky could be a first or last name, a pet / or an inanimate object / and I said no in the spirit of camaraderie” —Jason Bredle, “Camaraderie” @diodeeditions.bsky.social diodepoetry.com/v2n3/content...
Jason Bredle, diode v2n3
diodepoetry.com
November 4, 2025 at 1:27 PM
simeonberry.bsky.social
“I had a job once / at Tollbooths of America, but / they let me go. Or more accurately, / I preferred the short-term pain / of leaving to the long-term injury / of staying in one place.” —Andrea Cohen, “Purchase” @fourwaybooks.bsky.social www.nybooks.com/articles/202...
Purchase | Andrea Cohen
a poem
www.nybooks.com
November 3, 2025 at 12:21 PM
simeonberry.bsky.social
“The pain of trying to get it right is called maundering. / The pleasure is all mine. / Some say adjustable furniture is articulate. / No worthwhile poem should completely behave.” —Dobby Gibson, “Getting It Right” @theiowareview.bsky.social @graywolfpress.bsky.social
GETTING IT RIGHT. When you can’t get out of bed, it’s called dysania. The smell after it rains is called petrichor. The way certain words sing. The song of any animal is called its call. No one has ever known exactly what I’ve meant. To go ahead and say it anyways is to blaze. Bird is the word. Bird bird bird. Zookeeper, take your keys and leave me alone. If the fire extinguishes itself, we claim good fortune. When a pope turns himself into smoke, we declare a miracle. The remainder is what’s left behind. Have a look at those velvet slippers! Over there is his golden ring. The pain of trying to get it right is called maundering. The pleasure is all mine. Some say adjustable furniture is articulate. No worthwhile poem should completely behave. Naughty is an Old English word that once meant nothing, but this feeling of getting away with something, just by saying it, is never nothing. Driving someone else’s pickup pulling a long white trailer full of sleeping horses. Dobby Gibson
November 2, 2025 at 1:50 PM
simeonberry.bsky.social
“my human apartment / stocked with toiletries and rations, // its earnest furniture and photographs // of my son and our mothers / who machined us inside themselves” — @jaswinderbolina.bsky.social, “The Bad News: A Film Noir” @coppercanyonpress.bsky.social
THE BAD NEWS: A FILM NOIR. Now traipsing down a boulevard, now vaulting over a turnstile, now clicking its heels up the steps to the Elevated, then down the line to my postal code, now arriving in my dingy lobby in its gator-skin jacket and velveteen loafers, the Bad News hot-wires the buzzer, invites itself up with its bouquet of wild aneurysms and drooping embolisms, florid accidents and petite melanomas, and it isn’t welcome here, but the Big Bad News screeches its bad emergency alert into my regularly scheduled broadcast. Now my every chyron reads: YOU’RE FUCKED! beneath a bad anchor with a bad hairdo reporting how badly fucked I am by the Fucked-Up Furious News breaking down my door, its tommy gun trained on my head in my human apartment stocked with toiletries and rations, its earnest furniture and photographs of my son and our mothers who machined us inside themselves, our mothers who delivered us, like armored personnel carriers, to our stations in the world, but the Abominable News will dismantle them all soon as it’s finished with me with my back to the door, my hi-fi cranking its earthly music, gorgeous me running the blender on a daiquiri: buzzzzz, buzzz, buzz. Jaswinder Bolina
November 1, 2025 at 12:29 PM
simeonberry.bsky.social
“Sometimes I watch her from the door, adrift in her long uncombed hair, the smoke rising from her mouth like noir.” —Sean Thomas Dougherty, “My eleven-year-old daughter asks for a pill”
from My eleven-year-old daughter asks for a pill. The father says, “I cannot sleep because every time I close my eyes, I hear an elegy.” The old ones have gathered in the eaves. Horses and elephants sleep standing. For years I drank vodka because I could not find sleep. Too often I heard the floorboards of my childhood. Those were decades I never dreamed. Elusiveness was a word the future earned. I thought for sure by now I would be dead before I would be the age I am. Perhaps it is my wife who saved me? Despite the odds and evidence? Sometimes in the middle of the night my wife will wake and go and smoke in the garage. She walks heavy on her four-toed foot. She shapes the shadows. What is she thinking then, quiet in the long O of alone. Sometimes I watch her from the door, adrift in her long uncombed hair, the smoke rising from her mouth like noir. She says, “I would prefer to be the letter b. Not for the buzz, but for the blur. Or the d of doze.” I tell her, “I would like to be the silent e that makes a vowel long, like the way the Irish purse their mouths and pronounce love.” Sean Thomas Dougherty
October 31, 2025 at 11:25 AM
simeonberry.bsky.social
“there’s a statute of limitations on grief, like, certainly, / how someone died can be sad forever, but who can be sad / simply about the fact that Shakespeare, say, is dead” —Jason Schneiderman “In the End You Get Everything Back (Liza Minnelli)” @ampoetryreview.bsky.social @redhenpress.bsky.social
IN THE END YOU GET EVERYTHING BACK (LIZA MINNELLI). The afterlife is an infinity of custom shelving, where everything you have ever loved has a perfect place, including things that don’t fit on shelves, like the weeping willow from your parents’ backyard, or an old boyfriend, exactly as he was in your second year of college, or an aria you love, but without the rest of the opera you don’t particularly care for. My favorite joke: Q: You know who dies? A: Everyone! Because it’s true. But ask any doctor and they’ll say that prolonging a life is saving a life. Ask anyone who survives their surgeries, and they’ll say yes, to keep living is to be saved. I do think there’s a statute of limitations on grief, like, certainly, how someone died can be sad forever, but who can be sad simply about the fact that Shakespeare, say, is dead, or Sappho, or Judy Garland, or Rumi. There’s a Twitter account called LizaMinnelliOutlives, which put into the world a set of thoughts I was having privately, but the Twitter account is kinder than I had been, tweeting things like “Liza Minnelli has outlived the National Rifle Association which has filed for bankruptcy” and “Liza Minnelli has outlived Armie Hammer’s career” to take the sting out of the really painful ones, like “Liza Minnelli has outlived Jessica Walter,” or “Liza Minnelli has outlived George Michael” or “Liza Minnelli has outlived Prince.” In my own afterlife, the custom shelves are full of Liza Minnellis—Liza in Cabaret, Liza in Arrested Development, Liza singing “Steam Heat” on The Judy Garland Christmas Special, Liza on the Muppet Show, Liza in Liza’s at the Palace, and because this is heaven, Liza won’t even know she’s in my hall of loved objects, just as I won’t know that my fandom has been placed on her shelf for when Liza Minnelli has outlived Jason Schneiderman, waiting for Liza Minnelli when Liza Minnelli has outlived Liza Minnelli, which is what fame is, and what fame is not, and if Jason Schneiderman outlives Jason Schneiderman, and your love of this poem waits for me on one of my shelves, and will keep me company for eternity, thank you for that. I promise to cherish your love in that well-lit infinity of forever. In one theory of the mind, the psyche is just a grab bag of lost objects, our wholeness lost when we leave the womb, when we discover our own body, and so on and so on, our wholeness lost and lost and lost, as we find ourselves smaller and smaller, which is why heaven is an endless, cozy warehouse, where nothing you loved is gone, where you are whole because you get everything back, and by everything, I mean you. Jason Schneiderman
October 30, 2025 at 11:25 AM
Reposted by Simeon Berry
amiyatzin.bsky.social
high elves are aloof and flighty, sylvan elves are depraved and cannibalistic and sylvanian elves have heavy rust belt accents and are forklift certified. know the difference!!!
October 29, 2025 at 10:14 PM
simeonberry.bsky.social
“I’m sure I have it coming, and my wife, the Empress / of Timely Responses, will find a way. / The Greeks had a name for this sort / of back and forth. They called it the House / of Thebes.” —Jay Nebel, “Colorado” www.greenlindenpress.com/issue17-jay-...
Under a Warm Green Linden, Issue 17 — Green Linden Press
www.greenlindenpress.com
October 29, 2025 at 11:24 AM
simeonberry.bsky.social
The title, cover art, and ad copy for this book are like three cats stuffed in a bag.
A thumbnail of a book cover entitled Hatred For Bugs, by Victoria Loria, with a muscled man in a white tank top and a woman with long black hair in a beige dress sitting together and looking at each other in a swamp, set against a background of trees with falling yellow leaves, with ad copy that reads, A cozy adventure to read in the fall
October 28, 2025 at 11:27 AM
simeonberry.bsky.social
“other times it’s like the city has no memory, / alive with breath and the onion tang of sweat. / You said once, cleverly, that history is just / a crime scene—and I laughed, too” —Morri Creech, “A Letter from Rome” hopkinsreview.com/features/a-l...
A Letter from Rome — The Hopkins Review
by Morri Creech, to Joseph Harrison: “Publius, friend, I notice things now you’re gone.”
hopkinsreview.com
October 28, 2025 at 11:03 AM
simeonberry.bsky.social
“should I say / you beat us / too / in the shower / in public / on the face / with boots / with a chair leg / chased Vicky / to cut her / awful hair / told us / get work done / more tits / less chin” —
@estherwslin.bsky.social, “Up the Mountain Down the Fields” @alicejamesbooks.bsky.social
UP THE MOUNTAIN DOWN THE FIELDS. should I say you beat us too. in the shower, in public, on the face. with boots, with a chair leg. chased Vicky to cut her awful hair. told us, get work done, more tits, less chin, more eyes, less ears. but it’s verging on melodrama. nice people don’t suspend their disbelief. Esther Lin
October 27, 2025 at 12:42 PM
simeonberry.bsky.social
“All I wanted was to lie on the sofa / and read my book, / The Life of Nero, / and not think about the election” —
@kevinprufer.bsky.social, “Election Night” @ampoetryreview.bsky.social @coppercanyonpress.bsky.social
ELECTION NIGHT. Are you ready? I nodded. She slid the needle in and the sick cat, who only a moment before had tried to leap to the floor, closed his eyes and exhaled. And that’s it, she said a little too brightly, pulling the needle out. That’s it? I asked. That’s all there is to it. The syringe going in and then the pressure when the vet pressed the plunger, Familiar, then unfamiliar, a sort of sparkling in the corners of the cat’s eyes like fireflies in the darkening backyard—and then the sparkling grew thick and filled the air, handfuls of black glitter Hours earlier, after I had voted, I found the dog had strewn garbage over the kitchen floor, the TV on loud—a commercial for pharmaceuticals. The cat was still alive at the vet’s. All I wanted was to lie on the sofa and read my book, The Life of Nero, and not think about the election while the cat suffered in his cube and the dog eyed me hungrily, and Piso, conspirator against Nero, plotted his assassination in dark chambers, because it seemed the only right option, Rome in disarray, the treasury plundered, Nero’s own mother ordered murdered. We must become a republic again, Piso declared grandly, then, betrayed by spies, succeeded only in entrapping himself. And later I sat on the sofa drinking wine while the returns came in and the body of my cat became ashes at the vet’s, and Piso cut his wrists in the courtyard behind his villa while his wife stroked his sun-dappled hair, and he exhaled one last time. It began as a kind of sparkling, just out of the range of vision, and then it slowly filled the entire field, until all I could see was a curtain of glitter, behind which the new engines of power worked—So many fireflies while the TV played the terrible news, and my cat no longer sat beside me purring, And That’s it, a voice said from somewhere—the TV? Blackness behind the trees, the dog barking into the darkness, the neighborhood enclosed in night. That’s it? I asked the empty room, encased in sheets of dark glitter, of history and sadness, senseless, now, he election decided. That’s all there is to it, the voice explained. Kevin Prufer
October 26, 2025 at 12:51 PM
simeonberry.bsky.social
“Your sadness gets a perfect score, / a 1600 on the GRE. / But if I had a gun, // I’d shoot your sadness through / the knee. Then the head.” —Erin Belieu (@erinwriter.bsky.social), “Perfect” @willowspringsmag.bsky.social @coppercanyonpress.bsky.social
PERFECT is not what I was, though you said I was, in an apartment in St. Louis on a green shag carpet redolent of the previous renter’s cat. Above all things, I am accurate. So what to say of the sunlight? Nothing. In the 21st century, there’s nothing to say about sunlight which lasted as long as it takes to have sex, and made us feel as warm as humans get, perfectly human, perfectly warm, though, sadly, you don’t remember this. Though, sadly, I remember this, and it still makes me angry—which is another word for sad as well as a synonym for nothing. Though if anything is, your sadness is perfect, your human disappointment, which you’ve raised like a baby in a black BabyBjörn, coaxing it into the best sadness anything warm could hope for. Your sadness gets a perfect score, a 1600 on the GRE. But if I had a gun, I’d shoot your sadness through the knee. Then the head. Or if I were a goddess, I’d turn you to a tree with silver leaves or a flower with a center as yellow as sunlight, like they used to do when saving the beautiful from themselves. Erin Belieu
October 25, 2025 at 1:00 PM
simeonberry.bsky.social
“When the Nuremburg laws were introduced to Bohemia-Moravia in 1942, quiet Ottla suggested to Josef David that they divorce. He at first refused.” —Anne Carson, “Short Talk on Waterproofing” @yalereview.bsky.social yalereview.org/article/cars...
Anne Carson: "Short Talks"
A piece by Anne Carson from our archives, in which Carson considers Kafka, Plath, Van Gogh, and walking backwards.
yalereview.org
October 24, 2025 at 12:57 PM
simeonberry.bsky.social
“I bring my knees up to my chest and pull the nightgown over them and from that position look through a book of circus freaks. I study Jo-Jo the Dog-Faced Boy and feel a tugging kinship.” — @joannapenncooper.bsky.social, “The Itinerant Girl’s Guide to Self-Hypnosis”
from The Itinerant Girl’s Guide to Self-Hypnosis. I am nine. I am sitting on a brown couch at 10 AM. I’m wearing tube socks and a rayon nightgown with the lace trim half torn off by my foot. Or I’m wearing my Bob Dylan t-shirt nightgown that Paul brought me last time. I like how Bob Dylan’s hair sticks out all around. It’s spring. My mother is sleeping. She hung crystals in the windows, and this is the time of day when the sun hits the crystals and sends bits of light onto the wood floor and the dust. We don’t live in the house anymore. We live in an apartment. We don’t have cats and a dog anymore, but we have plants. I bring my knees up to my chest and pull the nightgown over them and from that position look through a book of circus freaks. I study Jo-Jo the Dog-Faced Boy and feel a tugging kinship. I’m not lonely. I don’t think about TV. I don’t think about when my mother will wake up. When Lisa comes to the door, I tell her I can’t play. She gets really mad, almost as mad as a person can get. She tells me she hopes I rot in there and stomps down the stairs. I close the door and make a glass of Strawberry Quik. I sit on the floor with my glass. I study the bits of light and the floating bits of dust. Joanna Penn Cooper
October 23, 2025 at 11:34 AM
simeonberry.bsky.social
“Do you see the tree? / Its secrets grow as lemons. / Sometimes I pretend / I love my children more than / words—no one knows this but words.” — @victoriachang.bsky.social, “Tankas” @coppercanyonpress.bsky.social
TANKAS. Do you see the tree? Its secrets grow as lemons. Sometimes I pretend I love my children more than words—no one knows this but words. My children, children, today my hands are dreaming as they touch your hair. Your hair turns into winter. When I die, your hair will snow. When a mother dies, a house becomes a forest. My children, children, know that I am in the trees. True love means you won’t find me. My children, children, remember to let me go, delete my number, save the number of the trees. Remember, the lemons speak. Victoria Chang
October 22, 2025 at 11:56 AM
simeonberry.bsky.social
“In college, I kept buying posters of women lying down. / I didn’t notice until I was lying down / and saw them all at once.” —Laura Read, “In the same way we misunderstand the child ballerinas of Degas” archive.bloodorangereview.com/lauraread/in...
Blood Orange Review
Blood Orange Review is an online literary journal published by the English Department of Washington State University.
archive.bloodorangereview.com
October 21, 2025 at 11:44 AM
simeonberry.bsky.social
“the edible cut in fourths / because we all had to drive— / We gossiped like men about our / silly humiliations, the clock / pulling us further ahead / toward the stillness and our cars. / I miss being gay, I said” —Aaron Smith, “Fame” www.greenlindenpress.com/issue17-aaro...
Under a Warm Green Linden, Issue 17 — Green Linden Press
www.greenlindenpress.com
October 20, 2025 at 12:37 PM