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.
