ABOUT

CONTENTS

EDITORIAL

ARCHIVE

LAGNIAPPE

MAST

SUBMISSIONS

Three Poems
by Sandra Simonds


This state is a Storm, so it can no Longer
be Called Beauty

That flesh collection of creases
whose oozes push

the pulse that shouts
I am the Diaspora—the pores
cilia, clitoris. Climb up

Plutonian Tower, scribble
the view of

“this is my city between your fingers”
ask “what sort of annihilation
is this, what method
of junk?”

A clay
mirror cracks in the
sun’s endless sun. But it's not

the fires of hell that hurt.
It’s the white, tiger-eyed fire
of cleansing
the makes every orifice
clench before
it melts.




Green Reykjavik
            or Also Included in this Poem is an Animal

I raw ice.                                I war, ci?
I biked                                   on an ice
slice meaning                           “warlice chic,” oui?
Plane crash in Lokerbie,            Scotland: -273 degrees
to absolute                             zero is anyone’s guess
what a mess                            of birthmarks.

Which is a frictionless                 variety of Moroccan Mint
where molecules                               mash and helium defies
gravity. (That’s what                 the buried mammoth ate).
When the Swiss smoke             twirls her curls
is a fat farm Anglo girl               with smallpox less cows and so on.

How I wanted                           to be blonde!
That’s when I broke                 into the Christian farmhouse
and a gecko and a                  gecko and a gecko.
See how the proprietress          scoops eyeballs from skulls
with her crisscross                   ladle? What a rustic song
calcifies Christmastime               inside a crate with Adorno,

a shoehorn,                          a miniature chateaux,
a woman’s molar                   and Kafka’s sisters yodeling
one side of the equal                   sign isn’t necessarily equal to
the dismantling of lamps                or subjects on the other, a gate.




Rabies

Despair is a wilt-
ed row of zeros or
fractured clam shells
thrown to the calcium
sea with her ancient

present tense frothing
at the mouth. The teeth
carve a mirror
to cut the face
with their colorful clouds.
Don’t say that it’s
impossible. These Montréal clouds
have blades just
like weeds. And then
she barks from her ribcage.

I tend to pretense--
selves loosen from
them. Don’t
even look
at me. I keep having to X
out the Ohs, then
sweep up the
Stray H-es leftover in
the American alphabet.