Two Poems By Sandra Simonds
by Mark Bibbins, Editor
Animal Kingdom
Make me a mutant cannon of DNA you can’t rein in,
a carrier pigeon cannon formed
of decomposed Morse code, hoar frost on the chromo-
some boats, the eyehole
bones of an abandoned women’s hello or the unborn.
Next, make me a lost mutt by
calling animal control. Put fur in one corner
and then follow her wag to the shelter. In your sonic
boom sonnet, Spaniel and Dachshund will bark
allele spirals until they breed dumb or smart, medium
or three-legged pigeon w/ woof. Make me
an earful of unusual birddogs, the left for dead
in fool’s gold, the side of the road way he
looks at you when he wants to go home. Hello?
Over Nothing
So what if a man hits a woman in the throat?
She’s not as beautiful as she once
was anyway. Her “power of refusal”
over prawns. Over steak? Over grilled
halibut? Over nothing. The dinner candles twist
more than Mulholland Dr., the restaurant’s
sommelier pours Los Angeles into crystal,
the couple leaves the valley in a car crosses a decade
but the problem is the same with different people
wearing the same clothes with different people’s
eyelashes fluttering the Great Plains
in between their hands. Like space
when the whole city breaks into the foaming,
red face of seawater on the edge of a sandy cliff.
Sandra Simonds is the author of Warsaw Bikini (Bloof Books, 2009) and Mother Was a Tragic Girl (Cleveland State University Poetry Center, 2012). She teaches English at Thomas University in Thomasville, Georgia.
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You may contact the editor at poems@theawl.com.