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Simeon Berry @simeonberry.bsky.social · 20h

“She hopes the mother’s milk is good awhile longer, / and the woman up the road is still nursing. / But she remembers the neighbor / and the dead woman never got along.” —C.D. Wright, “Obedience of the Corpse” @coppercanyonpress.bsky.social cdwrightpoet.com/poetry/obedi...

— C.D. Wright

Obedience of the Corpse The midwife puts a rag in the dead woman's hand, takes the hairpins out. She smells apples, wonders where she keeps them in the house. Nothing is under the sink but a broken ...

cdwrightpoet.com

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Simeon Berry @simeonberry.bsky.social · 1d

“This is not haiku. This is more like fog and we’re socked in and your body

is invisible and right across from me simultaneously.

How much ammo you got? says one guy to another in the cola-chip aisle of the Food Lion.”
—Erika Meitner (@rika99.bsky.social) poets.org/poem/non-lieux

Non-lieux

Hand-painted on the side

poets.org

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Simeon Berry @simeonberry.bsky.social · 2d

“I had a fellowship but lived poorly
On cheap beer and penny candy.
Later, a career of killing time.
But I have always been
Shamelessly without guile.
It’s a question of acquiring
Money without the inheritance of chainmail.”
—Cynthia Cruz, “Charity Balls” www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazi...

Charity Balls

Old shapes and evenings With the peasant of bruising sorrow, His rooms of cigarettes and ash, chalk- Blue carnations in his long, blonde hair. In the rooms of this city where I was born, A ribbon arou...

www.poetryfoundation.org

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Simeon Berry @simeonberry.bsky.social · 3d

“I was wearing the knit sweater with the purple whales and I was warm. A woman screamed: Your hair! Your sweater! A texture paradise! // Someone told me they’re calling the other Sasha at work White Sasha.” —Sasha Debevec-McKenney @triquarterlymag.bsky.social www.triquarterly.org/issue-160/i-...

I FEEL LIKE IF I'M NOT WRITING POLITICAL POEMS I'M WASTING MY TIME SO I MADE THIS CONTAINER FOR MYSELF IN WHICH NOT TO BE POLITICAL — TriQuarterly

The first thing I thought this morning was mayonnaise would be a good name for a dog. I could scream Mayonnaise! Mayonnaise, Mayonnaise ! into the dark of my backyard.

www.triquarterly.org

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Simeon Berry @simeonberry.bsky.social · 4d

“she did not know the man well, but had trusted him to smuggle her father across the border, the man pocketed the money, bought chocolates for his mistress from Belgium, and placed Margaret’s father on a train to Auschwitz.” —Spencer Reece, “Margaret” www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazi...

Margaret

Once, quietly, she said to my mother, “I never knew the love of a man.” She had mentioned having a husband, but during the war they were separated in the chaos of Budapest, and later she lost track of...

www.poetryfoundation.org

Simeon Berry @simeonberry.bsky.social · 5d

“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

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Simeon Berry @simeonberry.bsky.social · 6d

“Because the great Marat was killed in his bathtub by a girl. // Because after her execution, the examiners were disappointed she was a virgin. // Because isn’t that the most important fact.” —M. Cynthia Cheung, “Incarnation” www.greenlindenpress.com/issue17-m-cy...

Under a Warm Green Linden, Issue 17 — Green Linden Press

www.greenlindenpress.com

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Simeon Berry @simeonberry.bsky.social · 7d

Thanks for the stunning nocturne! 💫🖤💫

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Simeon Berry @simeonberry.bsky.social · 7d

“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

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Simeon Berry @simeonberry.bsky.social · 8d

“I will wash the dishes while he showers. / In the bedroom, the windows // will not be curtained. / Nothing makes them wince.” — @jamesallenhall.bsky.social, “A Name I Could Not Say Aloud” @fourwaybooks.bsky.social www.versedaily.org/2013/anameno...

www.versedaily.org

Simeon Berry @simeonberry.bsky.social · 9d

“Sometimes I want to be taken into nothingness. / I want to be burned with the gypsy moths and bindweed. / Run to exhaustion with the wildebeest. / I don’t want this phone, I want to kill God.” —Bianca Stone, “Nature” @tinhouse.bsky.social www.newyorker.com/magazine/201...

“Nature”

“Maybe humans are the failed A.I. of Nature.”

www.newyorker.com

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Simeon Berry @simeonberry.bsky.social · 10d

(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

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Simeon Berry @simeonberry.bsky.social · 10d

“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

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Simeon Berry @simeonberry.bsky.social · 11d

(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.

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Simeon Berry @simeonberry.bsky.social · 11d

“No, Musetta’s / your gal, so Lil’ Kim put on your Queen of the Night gown, / the corset and headpiece with shooting stars, or your Lulu rags, / Jack the Ripper leading her to his knife, or your Lil’ Kim hot pants” —Barbara Hamby @upittpress.bsky.social poets.org/poem/ode-lil...

Ode to Lil’ Kim in Florence

We’re in a taxi on the way to see Andrea del Sarto’s last supper,

poets.org

Simeon Berry @simeonberry.bsky.social · 12d

(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.

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Simeon Berry @simeonberry.bsky.social · 12d

What’s shaking, sir?

Simeon Berry @simeonberry.bsky.social · 12d

“The maple / tree that grows out / of his head is heavy / with the longing / of the dead. My brother’s / death is long, and heavy / as a year. I’ve mourned /my living brother all my life.” — @janehuffman.bsky.social, “Three Odes” poetrysociety.org/award-winner...

Cecil Hemley Memorial Award

The Poetry Society of America presents a number of prestigious awards each year.

poetrysociety.org

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Simeon Berry @simeonberry.bsky.social · 13d

(58/61) “Witness, / if you can, listen: I slurped the frog-leg soup / gone bad. Held a brass spoon like a barrel / to my mouth.” —Vievee Francis, “Break Me and I’ll Sing” (The Shared World)
@nupress.bsky.social #WOC #61Books61Days #TheSealeyChallenge #SeptWomenPoets

The cover of Vievee Francis’ The Shared World: a black-and-white photograph of a concerned-looking woman with dark hair holding a white cloth the neck and face of a dark-haired man whose white shirt has dark stains on it.

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Simeon Berry @simeonberry.bsky.social · 13d

“There was laughter in the night, an unseasonable cold, and the beautiful sadness of lost roads and pine trees. I might tell Frank that I too have always lived near water and have seen the moon like a dead man in the river.” —Christopher Chambers, “What About This” @fencebooks.bsky.social

WHAT ABOUT THIS. The collected poems of Frank Stanford arrive by mail sealed in an opaque plastic shroud that requires a sharp knife to open, a book heavy as a brick, 762 pages, a smooth matte hardcover embossed with a blue monochrome photograph of Frank crouching with what looks like it might be a gun in his hands. But it’s not. He’s holding a dog-eared paperback as if it were a gun, perhaps like the one he used in 1978 to shoot himself three times in the chest. He’s looking up at you from a field of wildflowers, defiant and serious as only the youthful dead can be. There’s a story here in this book I’m holding, this book that has traveled a long way to my door, this book apparently purchased by and stolen from a public library in Washington DC to be sold on the internet like flotsam from a riverboat run aground in another time. But maybe this is a story neither I nor Frank can tell. Maybe this story’s already been told and is only any more an echo. I imagine returning to Fayetteville

an old man packing the weight of this book, a fading tattoo on my wrist of its kanji spine. The first time I went up to Fayetteville was for a wedding all mixed up with poetry, whiskey, and barbeque. There was laughter in the night, an unseasonable cold, and the beautiful sadness of lost roads and pine trees. I might tell Frank that I too have always lived near water and have seen the moon like a dead man in the river. I could tell him about the levees that broke my heart. I might say this book is an anchor, or that it’s a balloon cut loose and drifting away across the Mississippi leaving me where I’ve fallen on my hands and knees on the sidewalk. I might ask him his thoughts on jazz, on metaphors, and weddings. I might ask him about Room 308 in the Hotel New Orleans in Eureka Springs. Then again I might say nothing at all and just stand here a while beside the mailbox in front of a small white house in Fayetteville with this book heavy in my hands. Christopher Chambers

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Simeon Berry @simeonberry.bsky.social · 14d

(57/61) “I knew this family was strange. What’s with this boy who loves flowers? The crowds of people whispered. Football players tied him up.” —Marianne Chan, “Winter Flowers in Biddle City” (Leaving Biddle City) @sarabandebooks.bsky.social #WOC #61Books61Days #TheSealeyChallenge #SeptWomenPoets

The cover of Marianne Chan’s Leaving Biddle City: a collage of radiating rectangles of a photograph of a dark car driving away on a dirty, snow road toward bare trees and a white sky

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Simeon Berry @simeonberry.bsky.social · 14d

“A mere hundred years I lived, / a woman trying her millennia / of threesomes, my clipper ships / full of whips and silk in long bolts, / malt liquor and floor mattresses” — @erinhoover.bsky.social, “Given thee til the break of day” www.greenlindenpress.com/issue17-erin...

Under a Warm Green Linden, Issue 17 — Green Linden Press

www.greenlindenpress.com

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Simeon Berry @simeonberry.bsky.social · 15d

(56/61) “The secret / is to give a little / wine before killing.” —Toi Derricotte, “Tender” (Tender) @upittpress.bsky.social #WOC #61Books61Days #TheSealeyChallenge #SeptWomenPoets

The cover of Toi Derricotte’s Tender: a photograph of a reddish stone sculpture of a naked, seated female figure holding something against its chest.

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Simeon Berry @simeonberry.bsky.social · 15d

(56/61) “The secret / is to give a little / wine before killing.” —Toi Derricotte, “Tender” (Tender) @upittpress.bsky.social #WOC #61Books61Days #TheSealeyChallenge #SeptWomenPoets

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Simeon Berry @simeonberry.bsky.social · 15d

“The cashier asked for identification, so we had to surrender our six pack of tropical wine coolers and tin of Skoal.”
— @marybid.bsky.social, “Saint Monica Composes a Five-Paragraph Essay on Girard’s Theory of a Triangular Desire” @thirdcoastmagazine.com @blacklawrence.bsky.social

SAINT MONICA COMPOSES A FIVE-PARAGRAPH ESSAY ON GIRARD’S THEORY OF TRIANGULAR DESIRE. Two Dominican Sisters and a Schnauzer sit on the back patio in late June, eating deviled eggs and day-old Wonder bread. Years ago, the schnauzer would’ve been plotting a way to kill them both, maybe suffocating them in the collapsible umbrella or going for the throats. But now he’s deflated and damp, happy to lick the socket of an egg and blink as heavy bumblebees bomb the petunias. Molly Grace Simmons, Caroline Delaney, and Brigit McPherson occupied the space under the gym stairs like warlords with thick strawberry lip gloss and transparent glitter nail polish. One day Caroline brought a game to school with her: a maze small enough to fit in a uniform blouse pocket. Every time she patted her breast we imagined the tiny silver ball rattling against the plastic corridors and cardboard backing. When Caroline walked she made the sound of a pebble in the toe of a loafer. The boys imagined their tongues

rattling against the corridors of Caroline. Sister Rita confiscated the maze, made Caroline deposit it in the rubbish bin while everyone watched. Three noteworthy disappointments: Touching a Weimaraner for the first time and realizing that its fur was more like a donkey’s than the satin everyone imagined. The eyes were vacant, not all-knowing. Not as frightful as breaking into the abandoned mill at midnight with only a one-inch Bic lighter as protection. The floorboards were slick as strawberry lip gloss and the whole place reeked of eggs and wet dog. But there were no spirits. We left and hiked to the White Hen without really understanding why. The cashier asked for identification, so we had to surrender our six pack of tropical wine coolers and tin of Skoal. We stood in the rain and then went home. When three distant lights converge into one, the lost sailors know they can enter the harbor. If Kevin McMillan raps three times on the garage door, shimmy down the ladder

and let him in. Every third container is subject to a rigorous six-point test, which only means marking one extra box on the roster for every three hundred that pass by. Kevin can easily be hidden in a crawlspace or even behind a door that isn’t opened or closed very frequently. Remind him to stay completely silent and not to breathe. When Jason and Kevin shake hands are they really touching each other, or the person they have both touched in rooms striated by horizontal blinds? When they look into each other’s eyes is there anything between them other than a set of Acuvue contact lenses? Mixing Skoal and tropical wine coolers can result in double, even triple vision. The best way to break into an abandoned mill is to devise a cheerleading pyramid: two biggest people on the bottom and the smallest on top to pry open windows. Following that, everyone slips in. It’s mimetic. It’s the ship’s wheel held by both sailors at once, looking at their hands instead of the rain. Mary Biddinger

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