–

 

HOME, 1973
by Kimberly Knutsen
Home 1973 (2)

The Jesus and Mary monkey frizzles in the kitchen
as the snow moon melts.

And you—rabbit of death
—sit in your green chair

Rocking away the fruit
of bad deeds.

 

 

 

 

MONOGRAPH
by Simeon Berry
Photograph by Lane Greene
from Monograph (N. Confesses) 5-19-14

N. confesses to me that she watched G.I. Joe as a kid, and that she
wanted to be Scarlett. (I myself loved the mute, scarred Snake
Eyes.) I am dumbfounded. Even to a ten-year-old, the show felt
unbelievably hokey. No one ever got killed, and their M-16’s fired
dotted lines of lasers, despite the fact that they were clearly
wearing belts of ammunition. At first I marvel over the irony. I’m a
pacifist who’s never been in a fight. She’s a reformed radical
lesbian. Yet we like the same campy military cartoon. Then I get
really sad. This is what you fall in love over.

 

 

 

 

 

IS IT BECAUSE I’M NOT YOU
by John Sibley Williams

I cannot sing the water
rusting this half-empty mouth
back up into their clouds
and drink from the damaged sky
the heavy silence
of my voice?

        —for Faranak Farid

 

 

 

 

 

 

–

Kimberly Knutsen is an English professor on sabbatical, which is a heavenly state of existence.  She is also the author of two novels, The Lost Journals of Sylvia Plath and Violet.

Simeon Berry lives in Somerville, Massachusetts. In 2013, his manuscript, Ampersand Revisited, was selected by Ariana Reines for The National Poetry Series, and is forthcoming from Fence Books. He can be found online at http://simeonberry.com/