Tag: margaret bashaar

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Sandra Simonds’ “The Sonnets”

sandra-simonds

Safe House Safe

Hello there. Welcome to my safe house.
   Here you will find numerous porcelain Afghanistans.
In the safe house safe there are coins cut in the shape
   of Malawi. In the study where I wish you to relax, please
find a number of wood carvings of John Lennon & Sons.
   The lampshades are German. The Persian rugs are tongue.
Kind sir, halt! Do not issue another fatwa in Farsi!
     Not until you consider my landscape painting of Trebižat, that great
   Bosnian river or Smith’s high-realist triptych of the Tunguska event.
     Hello there. It would please me to please you with kindness
   upon entering my safe house door. If anything should
     irradiate the staff, there are replacement servants
ready in waiting to greet you beside the blown-up photos
   of gargoyles on the veranda in the cosmic burst garden.

 

—

This selection comes from Sandra Simonds’ book The Sonnets, available from Bloof Books. Purchase your copy here!

Sandra Simonds is the author of two previous collections of poetry, Warsaw Bikini (Bloof Books, 2008) and Mother Was a Tragic Girl (Cleveland State University Poetry Center, 2012). Her poems have appeared in The Best American Poetry 2014, the American Poetry Review, Fence, Poetry, and other journals.

Margaret Bashaar’s poetry has been previously collected into two chapbooks, Letters from Room 27 of the Grand Midway Hotel (Blood Pudding Press) and Barefoot and Listening (Tilt Press), as well as in many literary journals and anthologies including Rhino, Caketrain, New South, Copper Nickel, and Time You Let Me In. She lives in Pittsburgh where she edits the chapbook press Hyacinth Girl Press and is a staff writer for Luna Luna Magazine. Her debut collection, Stationed at the Gateway, will be published by Sundress in 2015.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Sandra Simonds’ “The Sonnets”

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Baker’s Dozen Sci-Fi Sonnet Featuring Charlotte Bronte’s Dress
                          Made of an H-O Junk Bond

Mon sem-blah-blah-ounce, this fission sonnet
   is a dumb blonde standing on a melting Mont Blanc
junk bonded to the phrase “O, that I spend my childhood
     in the Alps.” Come to think of it, I am an Alp.
Only a hydrogen-peroxide woman would yell
   let me out of the Brontë house. In Haworth, I tried on
Charlotte’s dress, my waist’s circumference
      a smaller o than the nineteenth century where her potential
energy’s stored and I thought…Indifferent horizon!
   Fizzing fuzz cell hell fusion cuisine string theory!
Bomb of was, you never were! Us girls put petroleum byproducts
      on our lips to kiss Swiss chocolate. That yelp alp
is anorexic. Atomic mass diet. Mon, whatever.

—

This selection comes from Sandra Simonds’ book The Sonnets, available from Bloof Books. Purchase your copy here!

Sandra Simonds is the author of two previous collections of poetry, Warsaw Bikini (Bloof Books, 2008) and Mother Was a Tragic Girl (Cleveland State University Poetry Center, 2012). Her poems have appeared in The Best American Poetry 2014, the American Poetry Review, Fence, Poetry, and other journals.

Margaret Bashaar’s poetry has been previously collected into two chapbooks, Letters from Room 27 of the Grand Midway Hotel (Blood Pudding Press) and Barefoot and Listening (Tilt Press), as well as in many literary journals and anthologies including Rhino, Caketrain, New South, Copper Nickel, and Time You Let Me In. She lives in Pittsburgh where she edits the chapbook press Hyacinth Girl Press and is a staff writer for Luna Luna Magazine. Her debut collection, Stationed at the Gateway, will be published by Sundress in 2015.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Sandra Simonds’ “The Sonnets”

sandra-simonds

Young Woman, Prehistoric Mammals Are Not Dinosaurs

I could stay locked in this room listening
      to the Replacements for the next two years.
My right hemisphere’s sixteen (blue) and my left one’s
      seventy-eight and it’s not a question of averaging
the two. Sucks that our common ancestor
      was suicidal as in O sorry-ass fish. O melancholy amoeba.
O despondent mold. But I crawled from the sea foam
      into the satin slip of the tongue in expensive
Jungian jeans, the underneath being this year’s
      fashion statement. Someday I’ll make it
to my little hoof-in-claw forest, wear crinoline antlers,
      felt paws, wrap a patchwork quilt around my form,
wave vacant arms to wild dogs. Another
      phantom. Dumb dumb. I am. Limb.

—

This selection comes from Sandra Simonds’ book The Sonnets, available from Bloof Books. Purchase your copy here!

Sandra Simonds is the author of two previous collections of poetry, Warsaw Bikini (Bloof Books, 2008) and Mother Was a Tragic Girl (Cleveland State University Poetry Center, 2012). Her poems have appeared in The Best American Poetry 2014, the American Poetry Review, Fence, Poetry, and other journals.

Margaret Bashaar’s poetry has been previously collected into two chapbooks, Letters from Room 27 of the Grand Midway Hotel (Blood Pudding Press) and Barefoot and Listening (Tilt Press), as well as in many literary journals and anthologies including Rhino, Caketrain, New South, Copper Nickel, and Time You Let Me In. She lives in Pittsburgh where she edits the chapbook press Hyacinth Girl Press and is a staff writer for Luna Luna Magazine. Her debut collection, Stationed at the Gateway, will be published by Sundress in 2015.

Editor Domme Seeking Masochists Like You!

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As you can imagine, being an editor I am also a complete sadist. Nothing gets me going more than rejecting an innocent (“innocent”) young writer’s chapbook manuscript. In truth, it annoys me that social niceties dictate that I must say things like “I wish you the best of luck in placing your manuscript elsewhere” because when I’m lying in bed at night it’s the thought of poet tears upon multiple rejections that soothes me to sleep.

And poets, I know you’re all just masochists. I mean, come on, you talk about submitting all damn day, and no matter how mean editors are to you, no matter how low your acceptance rate, you claw your way towards acceptance. And you pay editors money to keep on telling you no.

So let’s cut the crap. Why dance around what we all know? You poets want to be abused, and lord knows I want to smack you around, so allow me to introduce the very first Editor Domme for hire!

If you hire Editor Domme, there are certain things you must know:

  1. There is a fee that is in no way nominal. (Hey, if presses can charge $35.00 so can Editor Domme!)
  2. I will not be publishing ANY of your manuscripts. That’s not what this is about, poet-worms.

So you pay your fee, send me your manuscript (over Submittable so you can also feel the sting of what you KNOW is a completely form rejection I took zero time crafting because I care) I will pretend to read said manuscript (I mean, what editor actually reads manuscripts these days anyway, amirite?), and then I will respond (probably after about 6 months have passed to give you the illusion that I might have read your poetry and I might approve of it) with an email detailing exactly why you are the worst poet who ever tried to be a poet.

Of course, there are rules to these things.

  • You will refer to me as Mistress Editor at all times. Editors – and in particular Editor Dommes – must be shown deference. You of course understand that as poets you are beneath us at all times. This really should go without saying.
  • I will refer to you only as “poet” unless I am calling you “non-poet” or “poet-worm” but those second two cost extra.
  • No simultaneous submissions. I am a jealous Editor Domme. Also, I own your terrible, stupid poetry.
  • For an additional fee, I will post on social media about how awful your work is and I will tell all of my followers how you cried when I burned the pages of your manuscript one at a time in front of you.
  • The safe word is “MFA” but only little bitch poets use it.
  • 12 point font, Times New Roman, standard margins. You sub-human.

So submit to Editor Domme! You know this is what you’ve been into all along anyway.

 __

Margaret Bashaar’s poetry has been previously collected into two chapbooks, Letters from Room 27 of the Grand Midway Hotel (Blood Pudding Press) and Barefoot and Listening (Tilt Press), as well as in many literary journals and anthologies including Rhino, Caketrain, New South, Copper Nickel, and Time You Let Me In. She lives in Pittsburgh where she edits the chapbook press Hyacinth Girl Press and is a staff writer for Luna Luna Magazine. Her debut collection, Stationed at the Gateway, will be published by Sundress in 2015.

National Poetry Month Playlist: Margaret Bashaar’s Picks

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To celebrate National Poetry Month, our Sundress editors are sharing some of their favorite poems, most influential poems, and poems that they are really digging right now. Put them all together, and you have the Sundress Poetry Playlist!

Today’s picks come from Sundress author and Stirring poetry editor, Margaret Bashaar!

 

The poem I read that made me want to write poetry FOR REAL was “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.”

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.S. Eliot

 

And then when I was maybe 15 I read “Ecstatic” by Yusef Komunyakaa and almost died of poetry love.

Ecstatic

Joy, use me like a whore.
Turn me inside out like Donne
Desired God to do with him.
Show me some muscle,

Sunlight on black stone.
Coldcock me about the head
Till I moan like a bell, low
As the one Goya could hear

Through the walls of
Quinta del Sordo.
Tie me up to the stocks those Puritans
Handled so well in Boston streets.

Don’t let me down. I beg
You to use all your know-how
In one throttle. Please, good God,
Put everything into your swing.

 

And it’s not so much a single poem, but Frank X. Walker’s book When Winter Comes was hugely influential to me when writing Stationed Near the Gateway. His use of voice is superb and it remains one of my favorite books of poetry.

http://www.frankxwalker.com/books.htm

 

And then there was that time I sat on an airplane and sobbed while reading Rowing and The Rowing Endeth by Anne Sexton while everyone looked at me funny.

Rowing by Anne Sexton

The Rowing Endeth by Anne Sexton

—-

Margaret Bashaar’s first full-length book, Stationed Near the Gateway, is due from Sundress Publications in 2015. Her poetry has been previously collected into two chapbooks, Letters from Room 27 of the Grand Midway Hotel (Blood Pudding Press) and Barefoot and Listening (Tilt Press), as well as in many literary journals and anthologies including Rhino, Caketrain, New South, Copper Nickel, and Time You Let Me In. She lives in Pittsburgh where she edits the chapbook press Hyacinth Girl Press and is a staff writer for Luna Luna Magazine.