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8/30/12

Sandra Simonds


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 boyish lip gloss sonnet.
No crime spree sonnet. No egret sonnet.
No machete sonnet. No.
No adorable sonnet. No iron-on patch sonnet.
No Crimean War memorabilia sonnet.
No Greek laurels sonnet.
No.
No consignment store sonnet.
No global diamond store sonnet.




Into the House of Florida

You are my ounce, my octagon, my omen, ornate
      as palm leaf shadow curing the chlorinated waters
of the nuclear family’s backyard swimming pool. 
They own the world, do they not?  You are my zero sum game,
      my tribe, sailboat catching its cloth lip on the torn horizon. 
You are my minus sign, my time line, mathematic as water stored
      in a cube of antimatter. You open the cube
and poof—the genie, wearing a powdered wig, is out.
       You weigh organism. You weigh organ. You oscillate.
You climb into an oasis and come out as-is. As is always.
       You dream of Nazi-werewolves. I don’t listen. You drive to Orlando.
      To Tampa.        It is night. The bats’ sonar systems
            pulsate below our ozone, our little homeostatic zones
               like blood or home.



Sandra Simonds is the author of three books of poetry: Warsaw Bikini (Bloof Books, 2009), Mother Was a Tragic Girl (Cleveland State University Press, 2012), and a book of sonnets tentatively called House of Ions (Bloof Books, forthcoming, 2014). She is assistant professor of English and Humanities at Thomas University in Thomasville, Georgia. You can visit her at Sandrasimonds.com.

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