Sandra Simonds

 

 

Blowing Kisses from an Underwater Cave


If the flesh is wholesome
like a fresh Washington apple

then I am the flesh holes of some
malnourished brown bag of bones

that won’t stop at stop signs or a limelight
or quit the gamble when I’m obviously ahead.

When the oreganos of a Thursday morning
shift their aromas into my drugstore sleep, I feed

(in true parasitic fashion) on the blue meats
and yellow fats of your bully: the Law

of Osmosis. Pigeonholed as a halo of cells
around a pupil or growing outward like a green mold,

I declare all my bad behaviors to be an act
the way a kleptomaniac really wants

the attention of her ex-lover who is out snorkeling
with his latest girlfriend amongst those Bora Bora starfish.

The tropical fish may swish their asses but they
batter the bloated hands that feed them

with their rainbow lips submerged and retarded.

 

 

 

your dress, the impressionist painting, and not to forget Uruguay


sour tongue on an amoeba hill, an oops-a-daysee profile in the apple cider sun
a shanghai dinner and food poisoning         all night long   [and about the poem]…  

…was willed, by which I mean: it was no gift, he willed it to me
my gaffaw /my fault/ willed the way a nail is willed through

wood whereof   art thou   oh no      nono romeo I mean    Borneo
you know where things are very wild   the werewolf

of the torso’s whoa       and I were great traveling companions   our knapsacks
full of  knick-knacks and crackers    away we woe unto

[was it the mussels or the boy who cried wolf clams? the recidivist pancakes or]

my dear dr. graham
            says my body has
                        tiny. weak. points.
                                    (like a sieve) he
stethoscopes me
out and says, trust me, simonds, it’s the Blackbody Radiation.

 

 

 

Quarantine


I.

I have put everything away--------------------- [the damaged crown, the licorice sticks,
the mugs

without handles] they are in the sinew now

-------------------------- will put on my faux animal skins—

recommence------------------------------There are elements without names,
you said.
Have you found them yet? -------------------------they cooked mercury in Peru.
the word penance------------------------------------ as it is like the wood burning stove of the
                          periodic
                                    table, zinc, cobalt
and I will take everything down,  the floorboards, the garden of iron, the dog —

 

II.

Saline.
Yellow
to touch. this. alchemy. in. its.
anachronistic state: bellows the animal:
(cholera)         *       (time for)   *     (underneath) * (good for the money) *   (behavior)
                        (stick)               (my)                      (hooves)    that’s the mine                           
(oil-rich)
of the first proposition. You’re in a car    good/ bad-up/down-geared toward

and someone tells you the story of Ixion. For instance you
don’t know the story.
                .        
                   .         . goes the blimp with a banner that reads
                                                            "Health Coverage for All."

 

III.

Whereof water? And I feared I would. Glass becomes aqua becomes a rowboat in the middle of. The mint kindled. Garlic browned and flew across. I hoped I would. Salt becomes him. The blunders of the visual world. Glass gone. Water going. Coast guard set off. Turned into a cloud. Eyes in the cloud [watering]. Cloud gone. Mint is invasive. Nursery rhyme buy grapes. Signifies the collapse of. Found the crooked. 

 

IV.

                        pig insulin cheap
a boy with severe asthma
            prone to delusion
the swollen thumbs
of July. this lung lost meaning
I meant/ lost it / berserk in the saturnine prone
to severe and you will find
that I, too. desire shuffles.

 

 

 

Prose Poem Written at the OK Corral


I went to visit the amputee. He lived in a teepee made of stained glass. Precious stones lined the pathway leading up to his teepee. There were gardens in the area mostly gardens of light green moss. There was a forest of glass pineapples. I want to ask him many questions like do you take vitamins and if you do, what sort of vitamins do you take. I also want to ask him if he ever experiences the phantom limb phenomenon. When he says yes, I have a phantom limb I ask him: does it feel pain? or does it tickle the rest of your body. He said he lost his limb in the great war of 44444444444. According to the Kabbalah this was a "no nonsense" war. A war among wars.

When the great war of 4445454545454523243 ended many people were walking around the continent looking for their limbs. Prosthetics were invented only much earlier so he was fortunate enough not to bear the shame of a false-limb. The sham of it. He says I am an elitist and if I have lost a limb then I shall not hide from a night of googly eye stars. I lack nothing. I have all of my limbs.

He showed me his pet goat. He said the goat likes to drink saline solution and the goat chews black bubble gum. I was getting annoyed with myself. Would I ever be able to really understand the amputee in the teepee? Strange days. Strange days, friend. The moon is that dried clot of blood on a dried flower in my left pocket. Does the limb ooze cloud?  I took out my ATM card because the teepee had a snack bar and I was getting hungry. Limb, llama, buccaneer, despair.

a Ghastly fear!
The amputee would ask me to play a game of pick-up sticks. Notice that his left leg is missing and he wants to play only if a towel is tied around the missing limb. It's okay. I will tie the towel to the missing limb. He says please go outside the fort and pick us a few glass pears so that we can dine tonight and play our games in peace with full stomachs and I will put on some Schubert for the goat. It's the uselessness of milk, I tell you. The red breasts thrown out to Chernobyl sized skin cancer mutts.

In the months that followed the amputee disclosed the much needed information and though he had a violet temper I got all of the facts Jack. He moved into a dormitory-style "old folks" home and he killed his pet goat in a sacrificial ritual that could only be understood in terms of biblical prophecy. I was moved to a different case. Oh my caseload is heavy! Peking duck, marbles, Joan of Arc.