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
“Contemporary ideologies, studded with hashtags / It’s like not being able to wear a sexy nurse outfit unless you apply for a sexy medical license / You have to take someone’s blood pressure with your skirt hiked up” —Hera Lindsay Bird, “Untitled 404”
UNTITLED 404. After a Cindy Sherman Photograph. Recently someone scolded me for speaking about Cindy Sherman because Cindy Sherman was an instrument of the patriarchy. Like an evil saxophone, that only plays hold music for a bank. Bad financial jazz pouring out of the telephone. O sometimes I get so tired I want to blow the stars out, one by one. Every year people demand to know what art is feminist and what art is un-feminist. Sometimes I wonder if it’s ethical to be a woman at all. It’s a great stupidity to waste your life on right-seeming behaviour. Like putting a coin in a jukebox that only plays whale song. I like this picture because it reminds me of loneliness. And the great, unspecific boredom of life. It’s the expression I get every time someone tries to hold me accountable for my artistic wrongdoings. The critical theorists advancing, with black leather pompoms Once there was a time in which I had many ideologies. Many self-pleasing ideologies with which to chastise others. The theme of these ideologies was: however wrong you are, that is the exact amount I am right by. I felt them in my blood like too much money. Once upon a time, I had many ideologies. Many superior ideologies, with which to cheerfully educate my family and friends. Forget crying myself to sleep, I wanted to cry everyone else there. Then drive off in my Cadillac, my black wig blowing. Once upon a time I had many ideologies. And by ideologies I mean specific ideas about things other people should and shouldn’t do. But proving yourself right is a bad career. Then you have to prove yourself even righter, in a blue satin pantsuit. Sometimes the world is so backwards all you can do is stare. Stare and stare, from out behind your waterproof mascara. Oh it’s a great responsibility to be your own misogynist. There are so many beaded handbags with which to oppress yourself I don’t think the great project of art is ideological messaging time. Like Monet spelling fuck you in waterlilies. All I want is to pour my eyes into the world. The sunset blazing overhead like too much eyeshadow. People are always on the lookout for new ideologies with which to punish themselves. Contemporary ideologies studded with hashtags. It’s like not being able to wear a sexy nurse outfit unless you apply for a sexy medical license. You have to take someone’s blood pressure with your skirt hiked up. There are a lot of punishments in this world. And some of these punishments look a lot like day to day life. Some things cannot be transformed—only endured. The moon shining over all of us, with its clean white handrail. The imperative to be correct is the great failure of the left. Sometimes you just want to wash iceberg lettuce in quiet despair. It’s like buying a second wig and putting it on over the wig you’re already wearing. You cry and cry, impressing no-one. Hera Lindsay Bird
November 13, 2025 at 12:50 PM
simeonberry.bsky.social
“Katie Condon! Antiquity, antiquity! She sings of afterbirth & blood! / Today, the snarkiest poet since the discovery of fire invites you / to her home for a soy chai latte on the lawn!” — @ktcndn.bsky.social, “Book Blurb in the American Style”
BOOK BLURB IN THE AMERICAN STYLE. A caveman discovered the power of his dick & pressed it into one woman & then another, eventually creating the world’s most important poet since the fall of the Roman Empire: Katie Condon! Antiquity, antiquity! She sings of afterbirth & blood! Today, the snarkiest poet since the discovery of fire invites you to her home for a soy chai latte on the lawn! Thereafter, she will take you on a tour of her three-bedroom ranch: in the living room hangs Sappho’s portrait as a reminder of whom she has surpassed with her wiles! Talk of Dream Songs! Here, friends, nothing is boring! The most vital poet since the Big Bang invites you into her bathroom where the seashell soaps smell of Coleridge, of a mariner’s sweet-boozed breath, of sunshine, and brine! Her bedroom, where Katie Condon sleeps & fucks & drools, is bright; dust filtering through sunlight like the stars in her irises. Katie Condon
November 12, 2025 at 12:30 PM
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
“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
“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
“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
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“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
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
“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
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“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
“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
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“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
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“Eileen’s father told her he’d chosen her mother / over another woman because he preferred her fellatio. // It was unthinkable, to me, to hear this from one’s father. / The word, too. Like fallacious, an SAT word: mistaken, as in a belief.” —Victoria Kornick, “Eileen”
EILEEN did not say lawyer. She said attorney, and more often, litigator, a word I could not have defined precisely. It reminded me of alligator. Her father, an alligator. I didn’t know that from this word grew another she loved: litigious, which meant nothing to me, but rhymed with religious. Even in private, he is very litigious, she said, and I imagined him at prayer. Eileen believed kneeling was in itself the most powerful gesture. Fall on your knees, she sang at Christmas time, unaccompanied, always stopping before the second half of the line. O hear the angel voices. Of course it was sexual. But it was also not insincere. When Jane started having sex, she said, It only gets worse—how much you think about it. We were sixteen, and I didn’t believe it was possible to think about sex more than I already did. Jane said Eileen was a liar, though. No one could really enjoy that. And how often she did it—as if it were nothing. It’s not like she’s tripping in front of these boys, and landing on her knees. Eileen’s father told her he’d chosen her mother over another woman because he preferred her fellatio. It was unthinkable, to me, to hear this from one’s father. The word, too. Like fallacious, an SAT word: mistaken, as in a belief. Eileen believed it was not possible to experience pleasure without the complete surrender or seizure of power. When Jane talked about it, she said, giving head. I thought of Marie Antoinette’s, rolling. Or John the Baptist’s, on a platter. All day at school, I imagined presenting my head to an alligator. I pictured him devouring it. And Jane said, one day, I would think about this even more. Victoria Kornick
October 18, 2025 at 1:19 PM
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“In the dream I had cancer // You told your wife // The knowledge made her kind // The kind of knowledge one wants // We didn’t know what would kill us // On the train platform I watched the rats” —Nicole Callihan, “Aging” @saturnaliabooks.bsky.social
from Aging. 4. The lilacs smelled like lilacs. A boy read a map on the stairs. In the dream I had cancer. You told your wife. The knowledge made her kind. The kind of knowledge one wants. We didn’t know what would kill us. On the train platform I watched the rats. Zoë says oh dear instead of fuck. I fickle and fume and finger the flowers. Eva says I never get mad. 5. From what I remember there were horses in the snow. The common bird was less common. A roll of nickels mattered. If mattering matters. If mothering is collected in the child’s behavior. This morning we dyed our hair purple. I coughed up the moon. If the moon is a thing. Who will I disappoint next. Or in whom will I be disappointed. Or where to anoint this disappointing crown. Nicole Callihan
October 16, 2025 at 11:23 AM
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“Runninged to the toilet, / a spot of then a lot / of blood, cryinged on knees / then cryinged on knees / with a bucket then cryinged / curled naked in the tub, / ‘Stay out’ all night she said / behind locked door” —Bob Hicok, “The New Tense” @coppercanyonpress.bsky.social
THE NEW TENSE. Runninged to the toilet, a spot of then a lot of blood, cryinged on knees then cryinged on knees with a bucket then cryinged curled naked in the tub, “Stay out” all night she said behind locked door: a memory constantly having the child of itself, everborn past. They’d stopped reaching for condoms in Paris, by London threw them out, by Amsterdam: she felt a dream in her womb. The scythes of people saying You’ll try again and trying again and failing to stop people from sighing for years, his mother yesterday, her hand on his: At least you have each other. How she heard it: You have each other least. Bob Hicok
October 12, 2025 at 12:12 PM
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“The fears of my mother, / And I their projectionist / Cranking the projector. // An evening of noir films. / The electric chair is in it, / And so are the cops.” —Charles Simic, “Roach Motel”
ROACH MOTEL. The fears of my mother, And I their projectionist Cranking the projector. An evening of noir films. The electric chair is in it, And so are the cops. I’m smoking a cheap cigar, Playing poker with a scar-faced killer And a fat woman with a husky voice. She drinks gin out of a bottle, Sways her hips to the radio, Has wedding plans. At daybreak, a web of twisting shadows Cast by a ceiling fan. I have holes in my socks, An asthmatic wheeze When I kneel down to pray. I also have a long tail And look like a monkey Because I keep lying all the time. Charles Simic
October 5, 2025 at 11:12 AM
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“next thing she / knew, her husband was appointed bishop, / locking her into weeknights at church, / more casserole deliveries, / nine relatives flying in for her / daughter’s baptism.” —Marianne Kunkel, “Apostate Abecedarian”
APOSTATE ABECEDARIAN. A sociology professor told my cousin Break a rule in a public setting. Cappuccino in hand, my cousin plopped down in the front pew of a Mormon chapel. Everyone turned when she slurped. Filthier than coffee, according to Mormon gospel, is immodesty—how my sister looked wearing pants instead of a dress to church. Simple, silky jade bell bottoms, and next thing she knew, her husband was appointed bishop, locking her into weeknights at church, more casserole deliveries, nine relatives flying in for her daughter’s baptism. Over my dead body, my sister persisted, resisting the baptism after quietly reading that the Mormon founder raped his seven underage wives. Seventeen years young, I left the church too timidly—shoved my Book of Mormon under my bed, ghosted old friends. Voicing anger came later: I studied Wollstonecraft and hooks, heard X and Bikini Kill, bought a When there are 9 t-shirt. You who rage inside church walls, giving zero fucks if it’s polite, I worship you. Marianne Kunkel
October 3, 2025 at 12:07 PM
simeonberry.bsky.social
(61/61) “Say to the animal: heavy is / an apology inside the wind.” — @maidervang.bsky.social, “Death in Captivity, a Surrender” (Primordial) @graywolfpress.bsky.social #WOC #61Books61Days #TheSealeyChallenge #SeptWomenPoets
The cover of Mai Der Vang’s Primordial: a photonegative in dark aqua wash of a bi-horned quadruped standing in the jungle
October 1, 2025 at 3:45 AM
simeonberry.bsky.social
“close my hand around some smoke, / then open it and that smoke is gone / like the Russia of my childhood. / When I was a girl, / my father worked for the Cheka. / One morning, he forced my mother outside / in her torn nightgown.” —Ai, “The Émigré” @agnimagazine.bsky.social
THE ÉMIGRÉ. I stare down from the terrace at the firemen in their slickers, black mice in black hats, close my hand around some smoke, then open it and that smoke is gone like the Russia of my childhood. When I was a girl, my father worked for the Cheka. One morning, he forced my mother outside in her torn nightgown. The apartment was filled with her scent—ink, paper, fresh bread. I was warm, full of potato latkes and milk. I sang the song of the world revolution, but that revolution betrayed my mother. It’s quiet now, as the fire trucks pull out onto the asphalt sea like tiny crimson arks, as quiet as the apartment when I stopped singing, when my father said. Come, your mother’s safe. I followed him down the steps, but near bottom, I stopped. He turned around and held out his arms, then I jumped. I sit down at the word processor. On the screen, a page from the memoir I am writing. Even now, I hear my father’s voice as he shouts at my mother. She jerks her head toward me, then raises her skirt and wipes her face. I erase one word, another, till the whole page is gone, but I cannot erase that scene. My mother is locked forever in the Lubyanka inside me, her dirty, bruised face streaked with tears, the handbills she’d printed in that beautiful script of hers torn and scattered about her on the floor like mutated black and yellow butterflies. Now as I lean over the keys with my eyes closed, her face rises inside me, a fat harvest moon in a sky of India ink, a face whose features are so clear, so like my own that I cannot deny them; yet, I do deny them. My life is mine. She’s dead, she died, she dies each time I write. But no, she’s alive. She condemns me for leaving, for bearing witness only in the dark. I begin once more. A scene fades in, out, there are shouts from outside, a door is flung back. Mother and Father are taken from the room. Father who worked for the Cheka, murdered by the Cheka, Mother who opposed it also murdered. I go back to the window, look up at the gray tarpaulin of sky and see Father riding a red star down from proletariat heaven and farther out, Mother, straddling her own renegade star, gesturing and waving to me. They want to teach me to die for what I believe, but I say disown the world, don’t save it, don’t try. Live for what you believe. Survive, survive another night. But here they are, pressing their bloody faces against the glass. I slide the bolt back. It’s then our eyes meet, my two brown, speckled marbles and their sockets, filled with the black, blinding light of the universe. Ai
September 30, 2025 at 11:52 AM
simeonberry.bsky.social
(60/61) “The evening I saw death, / we ate eel braised / with bitter melon, drowned it / in cloudy broth / To this day the memory / how I tasted marrow / like an elegy frozen / in bone” — @sallywenmao.bsky.social, “Wet Market” (The Kingdom of Surfaces) @graywolfpress.bsky.social #WOC #61Books61Days
The cover of Sally Wen Mao’s The Kingdom of Surfaces: a photograph of a white bust of a featureless figure overlaid with an 18th-century willow pattern of a Chinese pastoral scene.
September 30, 2025 at 2:29 AM
simeonberry.bsky.social
(59/61) “the brimstone and bile of this book left open / to Bosch's realm beneath the left hand of God, / my foxed legacy of human bonfire.” —Kimiko Hahn, “Unearthly Delights” (Foreign Bodies) W. W. Norton & Company #WOC #61Books61Days #TheSealeyChallenge #SeptWomenPoets
The cover of Kimiko Hahn’s Foreign Bodies: a grid of framed and numbered curios fastened to a wall, including a hinge, a small blue horse, metal jacks, and a washer.
September 28, 2025 at 6:27 PM