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.
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