Into the House of Love

The landlady informs me she owes me hundreds of dollars.
   Apparently, I’ve been overpaying her for months.
What she doesn’t know is I’m building a house for her as a present.
        Inside the house, there will be a colorful tomb.
      I will push her in this colorful tomb.
She doesn’t know it yet. I have so many tricks up my sleeve.
      It’s because I’m passive aggressive. It’s because I’m mean and violent.
Have you built a house with a colorful tomb at its center yet?

      The sea has a center. And everyone loves the sea
   because the sea loves no one. She pulls in everything: the nursery
        the moon, the glass of milk the moonlight
shines through on the kitchen counter.
      If I had to compare the sea to something
I’d compare her to the sea.

—

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.

 

No Sonnet

No civil war sonnet. No sex reassignment surgery sonnet.

No black sonnet. No climate change sonnet.

No.

No crossed-out Unitarian Universalist sonnet.

No African-American sonnet. No girly sonnet.

No crime spree sonnet. No egret sonnet.

No machete sonnet. No.

No adorable sonnet. No iron patch-on sonnet.

No Crimean War memorabilia sonnet.

No Greek laurels sonnet.

No.

No consignment store sonnet.

No global diamond store sonnet.

—

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.

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.

 

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.

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.