To Take a Lover
Intricately woven
but very soft,
the suds
of catastrophe,
lethargic and hung-
over like the eucalyptus
trees in September,
October, gently peeling
away yet none-
theless charismatic.
I was strangely
intrigued by
poetrylover-
inthesky who said
and I quote…would
look much better
if you didn’t post your
obvious tit shots.
Whore…and I quote
quote quote sleeping
in the nude, making
myself revisit
the plastic over the air
vent or the sluice where
dreams grind
down the skeleton.
Who was she, he or they
and how was it that
one could flee into
the beautiful, anonymous
epithet of the breezeway?
Maybe he thought
I loved him.
No, that is absurd.
Maybe she thought
I loved her.
It cannot be.
The mediocre book
floats before me,
and when I try to pull
it to my chest, it
evaporates.
But I insist!
Something must
stay here, some-
thing con-
crete and
absolvable.
In the Intricately Woven To take a lover in winter when it is just as hot as summer these days which is to say the abey- ance slipped deep into nocturne fractals transitioning the digital stream to the wet body. I have asked far too much of you and now the correspondences we once cherished have been left in the gulch to simmer and dis- close, dis- close, disclose.
Kaleidoscope
In the kaleidoscope
of walnut trees,
why did
I allow myself to
meet you just
to feel more lonely
afterwards? Face
reality and all
of its circuitry—
doomed to make
the same er-
otic mistakes.
by Sandra Simonds
From the Artist: “Quote Quote Sleeping” is a 12” x 12” ink, salt, and air drawing on a Tyvek-mounted wood panel. This piece was created in response to Sandra Simonds’ triptych poem, “To Take a Lover in the Intricately Woven Kaleidoscope.” This pairing is part of an ongoing collaboration.
Sandra Simonds is a poet and critic. She is the author of seven books of poetry: Atopia (Wesleyan University Press, 2019), Orlando (Wave Books, 2018), Further Problems with Pleasure, winner of the 2015 Akron Poetry Prize, Steal It Back (Saturnalia Books, 2015), The Sonnets (Bloof Books, 2014), Mother Was a Tragic Girl (Cleveland State University Poetry Center, 2012), and Warsaw Bikini (Bloof Books, 2009). Her poems have been included in Best American Poetry in 2014 and 2015 and have appeared in many literary journals, including Poetry, The New Yorker, American Poetry Review, Chicago Review, Granta, Boston Review, Ploughshares, Fence, Court Green, and Lana Turner. She lives in Tallahassee, Florida, and is an associate professor of English and Humanities at Thomas University in Thomasville, Georgia.
Summer J. Hart is an interdisciplinary artist and writer living in Cold Spring, New York. Her written and visual artworks are influenced by folklore, superstition, divination, and forgotten territories reclaimed by nature. She is the author of Boomhouse (2022, The 3rd Thing Press.) Her poetry can be found in Waxwing, The Massachusetts Review, Northern New England Review, Denver Quarterly, and elsewhere. Her mixed-media installations have been featured in galleries including Pen + Brush, NYC; Gitana Rosa Gallery at Paterson Art Factory, Paterson, NJ; and LeMieux Galleries, New Orleans, LA. She is a member of the Listuguj Mi’gmaq First Nation.