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
“You had a yeast infection. You weren’t in the mood, that old euphemism. You went with your boyfriend, the Deadhead, to the Paterson Falls, near where you lived.” —Rosa Alcalá, “Not ‘What Can You Remember?’” @hopkinsreview.bsky.social @coffeehousepress.bsky.social hopkinsreview.com/features/you...
Three Poems from YOU by Rosa Alcalá — The Hopkins Review
From the author of MyOTHER TONGUE comes a new collection of prose poetry exploring the intergenerational inheritance of gendered violence. Ruminating on daughterhood, mothering, and the body's cumulat...
hopkinsreview.com
November 25, 2025 at 1:15 PM
simeonberry.bsky.social
“you, as you later confessed, / wanted to speak about Gorbachev, / the little map on his balding head, / and how that map was the secret / but obvious key to how people live / exiled in their own country.” —Stephen Dunn, “Nearing Midnight at the Century Club”
NEARING MIDNIGHT AT THE CENTURY CLUB. It was nearing midnight at the Century Club, all of us were dancing but not touching, and it was clear that for some, the dazzling ones, the sex this was leading to would be anticlimactic, insufficiently various, just a way to wind down. You and I, however, had been thinking of something radically slow, dreamy perhaps, fox-trot old. We moved toward our seats, the strobe lights coloring us stark white, jittery blue. Hard as it was to speak over the music, we actually felt like speaking, that’s what misfits we were, I wanted to tell you about the virtues of pretense, and you, as you later confessed, wanted to speak about Gorbachev, the little map on his balding head, and how that map was the secret but obvious key to how people live exiled in their own country. Then somebody from off the street grabbed the mike to tell us all we were dying, but he didn’t do it in song and was booed until he left, even we booed him for such failure of taste and timing, and were happy when the lead singer took over again, felt some odd comfort in his incoherence, his anarchic repetitions. “Let’s go,” you said, “before we won’t want to go,” and we walked out of the Century Club into the sensate, starless evening, my hand bridging your waist and buttocks, your hand in my pocket, and we knew that things would feel new for a while, which was all that we wanted. Stephen Dunn
November 23, 2025 at 2:11 PM
simeonberry.bsky.social
“There is something about falling when / you’re blind, a kind of synesthesia occurs, // I fell slowly into a cold paradise of blue. / It was like falling into the world in the birth wind.” —Stephen Kuusisto, “Letter to Borges from Houston, Texas” @coppercanyonpress.bsky.social
LETTER TO BORGES FROM HOUSTON, TEXAS. I fell down this morning, Borges. I blamed this on the pavement outside the hotel. There is something about falling when you’re blind, a kind of synesthesia occurs, I fell slowly into a cold paradise of blue. It was like falling into the world in the birth wind. Do you remember that? Falling like this is certainly a kind of nostalgia. I had time to think. “Only God can conceal God,” That’s what I thought. My arms were extended like wings. Joyfully, falling. I should add that no one was awake to see me. Borges, did you ever laugh in so much blue? Stephen Kuusisto
November 22, 2025 at 1:24 PM
simeonberry.bsky.social
“It’s so hard / to be someone’s Anything. You walk all this way through the woods / not being eaten just to get eaten in the warm cabin, the one that smells faintly / sweet” —Jeff Whitney, “Hero’s Journey” www.greenlindenpress.com/issue17-jeff...
Under a Warm Green Linden, Issue 17 — Green Linden Press
www.greenlindenpress.com
November 21, 2025 at 2:30 PM
simeonberry.bsky.social
“There was nothing in those notebooks // that needed protection. Nothing private / of the great poet ferried from the otherworld. / All we learned was that he had terrible handwriting.” — @paisleyrekdal.bsky.social @ugapress.bsky.social sites.lsa.umich.edu/mqr/2019/02/...
The Structure of Pluto
Paisley Rekdal’s poem, “The Structure of Pluto,” appeared in  MQR’s Spring 2002 issue. ____________________________________________________________________________________________…
sites.lsa.umich.edu
November 20, 2025 at 2:10 PM
simeonberry.bsky.social
With very rare exceptions, it seems like the Gods of Poetry have decreed that you can have end rhymes, or you can have naturalistic sentence structure, but you can’t have both.
November 19, 2025 at 12:51 PM
simeonberry.bsky.social
“Welcome to the abattoir. / The opera is ending soon. / Get a taste of this raspberry tart / before the bad odor starts. / We’ll all get our ears pierced, then burst into tears.” —Kim Addonizio, “Aria Di Sorbetto” @oneart.bsky.social oneartpoetry.com/2024/08/16/t...
Two Poems by Kim Addonizio
Upstate Nature’s a beautiful bitch. Nightshade along the Hudson & in an old stone house the floorboards warp with nostalgia. I have friends with hearts that stutter, one going slowly blind. Nat…
oneartpoetry.com
November 19, 2025 at 12:32 PM
Reposted by Simeon Berry
toddedillard.bsky.social
aesthetics is the overlap between "how did they do this" and "why are you like this"
November 17, 2025 at 7:43 PM
simeonberry.bsky.social
“Napoleon Bonaparte: in exile: where he took to standing on the back of a turtle: (one sailors had brought to solve the entire loneness of the Atlantic Ocean)” —J.P. Dancing Bear, “Saint Helena August 10” @thelitpub.bsky.social www.thelitpub.com/reviews-inte...
An Interview with J.P. Dancing Bear — Moonlighting
Recently I had the very good fortune to talk with J.P. Dancing Bear about his new collection  Family of Marsupial Centaurs  released by Iris Press. This mesmerizing collection of poems origi...
www.thelitpub.com
November 17, 2025 at 6:51 PM
simeonberry.bsky.social
The two most disastrous hungers in a creative career are for dignity and authority. There are some who also take these for the pillars of an academic career, and that’s a big part of why I chose to work outside the academy.
November 17, 2025 at 2:08 PM
simeonberry.bsky.social
“a pair of my daughter’s jeans (washed and washed again, packed away for Goodwill), / I found old gum deep in the pocket and a tiny note folded so hard, the blue ink barely blurred: // I’m friends with mean girls and I feel like I’m drowning” —Jennifer Martelli, “Stone-colored Birds”
STONE-COLORED BIRDS. I’ve always lived by the shore and this one has a stone circle to mark the sun and it’s surrounded by squat pink roses and sea grass, empty Seagram’s. We started giving the light back five days ago, and still the kids are in school. The boys in my son’s class made a list of ugly girls they’d dance with for a dollar. On the walk down past the copse and the ivy wall, I saw something blue—three stone-colored birds rose from the bush, banked left, flew off toward Dogtown. In a pair of my daughter’s jeans (washed and washed again, packed away for Goodwill), I found old gum deep in the pocket and a tiny note folded so hard, the blue ink barely blurred: I’m friends with mean girls and I feel like I’m drowning. The girls know who was written down. No matter how beautiful their dresses on that hot June, don’t you think the girls will know? They’ll always know and their mothers will too. Jennifer Martelli
November 17, 2025 at 1:24 PM
simeonberry.bsky.social
“I’ve had my nervous breakdown. I’ve had electric shock. // I’ve had my figurative lobotomy, courtesy of patriarchy / and the cops.” —Lise Goett, “Flame-Shirt Rag” @tupelopress.bsky.social
FLAME-SHIRT RAG. Love, you come lit with a fifth of alcohol, always asking from your Cross to be taken down. Your shirt split open, your heart wrapped in barbs, Robe of Nessus, Sacred Heart, how can I put you on without being burned? In the spectral hours, you visit me in my fine, stone house, ask for a piece of bread, show me your wounded heart and where the nails and shiv went in. Immolated in their seamless shirts of flame, the young are up to no good again, shrouded in an ether dream. I stay awake, as mothers do, worrying about the outcome. I have had to cut my heart out to try to get some sleep. You look down from your Cross and say, What can you do to me that you haven’t already done? Tell me a story of resurrection and of a better life. Tell me that I’ll get home to heaven after all. I’ve had my nervous breakdown. I’ve had electric shock. I’ve had my figurative lobotomy, courtesy of patriarchy and the cops. Your ladies of heaven look on the contraband of war I’m always smuggling out. I’m running out of time. O Sacred Victim, send me the clippings from your fingernails. I need to resist temptation—another high in care of Robitussin, airplane glue, naphtha, the mechanical phallus, a whiff from an aluminum tube. O fig tree planted in a prison yard, Liberty tattooed with a Molotov, I can’t die trying to love you enough. Further, farther, faster, this life, the passing scenery, and tarmac a blur, o moonbeams on a sugar plate, all I want is ecstasy and a lover who makes me wet. In the carceral imagination, all of us are trapped. Sometimes the mind and body are out of phase, the dim boy in me the only one who claps. Lise Goett
November 16, 2025 at 2:22 PM
simeonberry.bsky.social
“We are / what was not hung, dumped, or flung / from the Zong, splashing and graveless, / lest you think the ocean a tombstone.” —Tiana Clark, “The First Black Bachelorette” @kenyonreview.bsky.social
from The First Black Bachelorette. Amaud says, for us, American Blacks, we are postapocalyptic. The end is not near but behind us. We are what remains of our twelve million enslaved, shipped, and spread. We are what was not hung, dumped, or flung from the Zong, splashing and graveless, lest you think the ocean a tombstone. The ocean is not scared or scared enough. But. We out here! Anyway. Trying to save ourselves, still. Still sprinkling black pepper behind our feet as we run away. But. There is no north now. We find the drinking gourd within our cells. Guiding stars within our own black-lit blood. We glow. Maybe it is true then... that beauty is a type of survivor’s guilt, a sackcloth I suffer and itch and injure from and for. Or, rather, that I am seen through sin? Dirty Hottentot zoo is my body. Tiana Clark
November 15, 2025 at 2:27 PM
simeonberry.bsky.social
“I saw he had circled in red / the word possess and wondered did he / think it was misspelled, or did he want / me to know his mind was taken / at the end” —David Keplinger, “Possess” poems.com/poem/possess/
Possess
I may remember of my life, a few moments of bewilderment in which I knew what being wild meant, mounting to the volta, the bolt of lightning
poems.com
November 14, 2025 at 1:18 PM
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
“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