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Simeon Berry @simeonberry.bsky.social · 20h

“Honesty: a neckline he only buys plunging, / his bitten kiss there chromatic, blooming.” —Thomas A. Loudermilk, “Talk Like a Sailor”

TALK LIKE A SAILOR. We never love each other with our mouths open & only when it’s flat drunk dark do we fuck facing—when I kneel at his mouth, the confessional, & whisper to the little red priest inside, I’ve lied, I told my lover I despised him. (Honesty: a neckline he only buys plunging, his bitten kiss there chromatic, blooming.) My criminal has a handsome face, dark eyes like hours of suspicion, moments of trust. I look prim next to my criminal, our joke on this subdivided district so 2nd Baptist. Talk like a sailor, says he. Cuss a blue streak. He adores my indelicacy

at night, when it grifts him to sleep. Under his right jaw: today’s shaving scar. I know should I endear his flaws, he’d never forgive mine. Night idles on its axle & I play him by the goatee, spit toothsome songs about stars falling & petty cash, room keys & ice buckets, zirconias & hostages & that time we took pictures & this heart my risked fortress, my throttled valentine. Like a sailor, he says. I’ll give lousy eulogy. Cuss a blue streak. Hatred is loving too hard. When I call him a bastard, make the bed with old fire.

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Simeon Berry @simeonberry.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

“On the bluffs, the trees still resemble crosses in a graveyard. / It is a graveyard. / Across the sea the war had ended. / Those were the airplanes gone to fetch the wounded. / Those were the dead, watching the waves come in.” —Nicholas Christopher, “Winter Night”

WINTER NIGHT. Burning torches line the floor of the sea. Women in white hurry along the beach, into the mist, with a pack of dogs. It is past midnight. Airplanes, every few minutes, fly out from the land, over the bluffs where the stripped trees line up like crosses in a military graveyard. A lighthouse beams its small yellow moon onto the breakers, and the big moon hangs behind the scudding clouds. The women pause at the jetty and loosen their hair. The dogs leap through surf with muffled cries and run in circles around the dim figures that have appeared in the shallows: men with smoky faces and limbs, robed in sheets of blue light.

The women stare past them, mesmerized by the torches. The airplanes are growing louder and more frequent. It is cold and the gray sand has slicked itself into glass. The women skate back up the beach against the whistling wind, and the dogs dive through the black curtain where the water deepens, and the men disappear in a burst of spray. The torches float up to the surface, like the reflections of stars. On the bluffs, the trees still resemble crosses in a graveyard. It is a graveyard. Across the sea the war had ended. Those were the airplanes gone to fetch the wounded. Those were the dead, watching the waves come in. Nicholas Christopher

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Simeon Berry @simeonberry.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

(61/61) “his father’s sparse crop / turns him inside out. / A pocket that aches / to be filled / Calico and honey / sell slow on the frontier” —Laura Da’, “Auction of the Bonded” (Instruments of the True Measure) The University of Arizona Press #61WomenPoets #WOC #TheSealeyChallenge #SeptWomenPoets

The cover of Laura Da’s Instruments of the True Measure: a painting of an abstracted, dark, geometric sky with crescents of light blue tiles, over a warped green tree and grey hills

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Simeon Berry @simeonberry.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

(60/61) “So many people / are interested in how you may multiply, even if puberty / made you cry” — @asaldrake.bsky.social, “To Someone Who’s Heard I Love You Too Many Times” (Maybe the Body) Tin House Books #61WomenPoets #WOC #61Books61Days #TheSealeyChallenge #SeptWomenPoets

The cover of Asa Drake’s Maybe the Body: a painting of pink flowers and a snake curled around a bell jar with a brown and white rabbit sitting inside it

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Simeon Berry @simeonberry.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

“He would not go to sleep until his father came home. To stay awake the boy would review the faces on the obsolete coins in his collection. In the dark he could name the date and worth by the wear on the face” —David Keplinger, “Further Entries from the Notebook of Anton Chekhov”

from “Further Entries from the Notebook of Anton Chekhov”. From the cloakroom a woman appeared, carrying his false leg. She gave it to the man who had fallen. “We’re just like a puppet theater,” he said, pretending to beat her with the leg. For him, there is a heavy burden to be whole. First, he must become a nothing. A hotel room: he and his lover fast asleep. Is the snow suddenly worse? Is it her husband who bangs on the door? He will have to rise to ask the banging in. The night is cold and he is naked as he carefully lifts the bolt. He would not go to sleep until his father came home. To stay awake the boy would review the faces on the obsolete coins in his collection. In the dark he could name the date

and worth by the wear on the face. Other contents of the box he preferred not to touch: the cicada’s white thorax that had flinched for a day, the knife his father gave him. His father had told him to keep the knife: it having belonged to someone who was dead. They are discussing the interior of the apple. The Admiral proclaims it “a darkness and a whiteness at the same time.” The other guests constantly laugh at him. He has spent so many years at sea he can no longer walk without holding onto things. A clairvoyant: “I’m bored with the future. My great love is the past. I’m not sure of anything that’s ever happened.” David Keplinger

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Simeon Berry @simeonberry.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

(59/61) “the Black witches know that / the terror is not in the moon” —Lucille Clifton, “In Salem” (An Ordinary Woman) Random House #61WomenPoets #WOC #61Books61Days #TheSealeyChallenge #SeptWomenPoets

The cover of Lucille Clifton’s An Ordinary Woman: the title and author in vertically and horizontally staggered purple script with the first letter of each word in red

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Simeon Berry @simeonberry.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

(58/61) “The water is trending higher these days with or without / my paper moon and the wings in my corner” —Abigail Chabitnoy, “All the Daughters” (In the Current Where Drowning is Beautiful) @weslpress.bsky.social #61WomenPoets #WOC #61Books61Days #TheSealeyChallenge #SeptWomenPoets

The cover of Abigail Chabitnoy’s In the Current Where Drowning is Beautiful: a photograph of an abstract swirl of white material

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Simeon Berry @simeonberry.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

“we are boys of 8 and 10 / in a long and windy corridor, waves of papery flora / brushing our legs and Led Zeppelin is not a thing that exists, / and for that I am thankful.” —Anthony Robinson ( @oregonsheds.bsky.social), @pinehillsreview.bsky.social pinehillsreview.com/2022/10/19/a...

pinehillsreview.com

“Feeling Minnesota” by Anthony Robinson

We are having tacos with vikings / on the banks of several bodies of water.

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Simeon Berry @simeonberry.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

(57/61) “My lungs grow black lilies / while I play Bach’s Ich ruf zu dir / on the spinet in the Harlem room.” — @jmaebarizo.bsky.social l, “Sunday Women on Malcom X Boulevard” (Tender Machines) @tupelopress.bsky.social #61WomenPoets #WOC #61Books61Days #TheSealeyChallenge #SeptWomenPoets

The cover of J. Mae Barizo’s Tender Machines: a black and white photograph of a city skyline at night

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Simeon Berry @simeonberry.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

“A great upheaval rehearses itself / in a woman reading the last stanza / of an elegy in which a man disfigured / for life is preparing to fight a hummingbird.” —Mary Ruefle, “Red Sleeves” @newenglandreview.bsky.social

RED SLEEEVES. A great upheaval rehearses itself in a woman reading the last stanza of an elegy in which a man disfigured for life is preparing to fight a hummingbird. She cries softly into her red sleeves. The candle also is red, and white where mice have gnawed out their hearts, passing another winter like crazy women changing lip color in a ladies’ room. Everything outside is brown and full of ideas: not quite spring, a woodpecker percolates in the top of a butternut tree. He has not yet shown his breast. Soon, fat roses will be breathing heavily in the dark. Mary Ruefle

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Simeon Berry @simeonberry.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

(56/61) “a spoon to carve out the child / from rice & malaria / a bag of bones to sink the body / a scythe to kill someone with / a map of the moon to go thereafter” —Mông-Lan, “A Bamboo Knife” (One Thousand Minds Brimming) Valiant Press #61WomenPoets #WOC #TheSealeyChallenge #SeptWomenPoets

The cover of Mông-Lan’s One Thousand Minds Brimming: a photograph of two women in white robes, pants, gloves, and hats astride bicycles in a city street

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Simeon Berry @simeonberry.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

“his files were full of references / to Kirby the poet, and I said you’re kidding, / and he said no, in fact it was pretty typical / for certain kinds of people to assume an intimacy // with poets, since poets deal in hidden meanings.” —David Kirby, “On Being a Poet”

ON BEING A POET. I am sitting in my office when the phone rings, and it’s a colleague I know vaguely, a home economics professor who has chaired a couple of committees I’ve been on, and she says, “I’m going to be in your poetry workshop this term, David, what are we going to be doing in there?” and for a moment I’m gulping for air like a guppie, and then I regain my composure and say, “Mary, that’s a permission-only course, I’ll have to look at some of your work before I say yes,” and suddenly she’s the Jessica Walter character in Play Misty for Me, only instead of going over to Clint Eastwood’s house and slicing his jungle-pattern ’70s polyester shirts to shreds, she’s telling me I’m arrogant, I’m a snob, I think I’m better than other people whereas I’m the one with no compassion, no compunction, no class, and then she concludes by saying, “I will continue to write, David!” and I say, “So who’s stopping you?” but by that time she has already banged the phone down,

and I’m in a state, an absolute state, because I keep forgetting that all you have to do is say the word “poet” to some people and they start projecting the strangest attitudes, though the only time I was actually ever scorned for being a poet was when I was trying to buy a house, and the negotiations fell through, and the seller got angry and said, “You’re a poet, aren’t you?” and I admitted I was, knowing something terrible was coming next, though what he said was no worse than that I should go back to my poems and leave the cold, hard world of business to men like himself, real men, practical types who understand how things work, but I figured that I knew how things worked in his case, at least, and that he was the kind of guy who thinks his wife is ugly and his kids are dumb, the kind who sits next to me on airplanes and says, “Is there any money in that?” after I confess my little secret, though I think most of the businessmen

I meet on planes are indifferent to rather than scornful of my chosen profession, so that even though they often feel obliged to wonder out loud why “poetry doesn’t rhyme anymore,” before I am very far into my answer, the poor devils have already drifted back to their laptops or the in-flight movie, sorry they ever asked. But believe me, indifference and even scorn are better than this assumed intimacy that turns to clawing and spitting rage when it’s rebuffed, and right now I’m wondering if this Mary woman is going to show up on my doorstep with a pistol, the way one student did who said she was going to kill herself unless I “fulfilled her needs,” whatever they were, or with a dead squirrel, as the student did who said I’d had a number of past lives and the squirrel had been one of them, or with a blood-soaked suicide note, like the one who said I had driven her crazy by talking to her over the PA system when she went to the supermarket. At a party once I introduced myself to a man

I didn’t know who said he sure knew me because he was the director of the counseling center on campus and that his files were full of references to Kirby the poet, and I said you’re kidding, and he said no, in fact it was pretty typical for certain kinds of people to assume an intimacy with poets, since poets deal in hidden meanings. So unless you change your job, he went on, you’re always going to have certain people reading your poems and finding messages in them that aren’t really there, and I was stunned, I went over to the buffet table and got some more brie and some grapes, but later that night after I’d gone home, while I felt sorry for the poor disturbed people—I had to put up with one of them every couple of years or so, but then they had to put up with themselves twenty-four hours a day—I figured, as far as the messages go that either are or aren’t in the poems, really, who am I to say? David Kirby

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Simeon Berry @simeonberry.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

(55/61) “our new lover / in the final episode of ‘Santa Barbara’ / will lean over a scented candle / and call us a ‘bitch.’” —Marilyn Chin, “How I Got That Name” (The Phoenix Gone, the Terrace Empty) @milkweededitions.bsky.social #61WomenPoets #WOC #61Books61Days #TheSealeyChallenge #SeptWomenPoets

The cover of Marilyn Chin’s The Phoenix Gone, the Terrace Empty: a photograph of water in a round, stained green receptacle reflecting the sky

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Simeon Berry @simeonberry.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

“when the normal host goes face down / in the free tequila handed out at Promotions. / I’m the one left standing who sets the Demods / up for Go, passes Tylenol and headphones out / like Kleenex in the control room” — @paisleyrekdal.bsky.social, “Love Phones” @ugapress.bsky.social

from Love Phones. 2. The Intern. Because it’s radio and their voices are smooth, because it’s sex they air, the hosts get more fan mail than their looks deserve. Dr. Judy, one man demurs, must be a vixen. But I know best, having worked the late shift at the station. “Subbing,” they call it, when the normal host goes face down in the free tequila handed out at Promotions. I’m the one left standing who sets the Demods up for Go, passes Tylenol and headphones out like Kleenex in the control room. When the call for me first came through it wasn’t unusual: for female DJ’s, radio’s a magnet for solitudes who think the visual is an imposition. By midnight, we’re anyone’s face.

“Do you pull your panties off one leg at a time?” he’d asked. “Do you like to suck your fingers?” “Screw you,” I said and hung up. But the threat must have come off as an imperative; every night at twelve o’clock, he calls. “I can tell you’re smart,” he said after our third conversation. “You don’t want to suck my cock, do you?” Meanwhile Judy’s regulars complain about the soullessness of dating. “It’s like,” says caller number two, “I have this deep dark hole I just can’t fill.” Which is, Jagger proclaims, just what we’re here to do. Night’s for the Lonely Hearts: jokers scratching bathroom stalls full of phone numbers who find our hotline call-in stapled next to posters of Asian girls and Danish cheerleaders broadcasting universal help help help, translated to show and more show. So “Let’s talk more about her deep, dark hole,”

Jagger growls, and I picture stars sucked like cue balls into crushing space pockets centimeters wide; perhaps (this with guilt) a thirteen-year-old and her first makeshift shortwave radio in a blacked-out park, letting the world’s silky tongues roll over her. For better or for worse, settling on us. And always: Let’s talk more about this hole, this cavity of yours eaten out by increasing addictions to toll-free numbers; trash’s sweet, singular anxieties— “I’ll bet you’re married,” The Pervert said last night. Tricked into intimacy, I’d forgotten myself and answered, “No.” “I knew it,” he replied. “You just don’t sound like you’d listen to that kind of garbage.” I’m starting to think of it like advice. Paisley Rekdal

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Simeon Berry @simeonberry.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

(54/61) “men spitting watermelon seeds / the shape of my dime-store mood ring” —Kimberly Blaeser, “Reliquary” (Copper Yearning) Holy Cow! Press #61WomenPoets #WOC #61Books61Days #TheSealeyChallenge #SeptWomenPoets

The cover of Kimberly Blaeser’s Copper Yearning: a photograph of a pond with water lilies and dark reeds reflecting a blue sky with dark pink clouds

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Simeon Berry @simeonberry.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

“Odd word: culture, as though this swab cared / About art and music, loved the opera, / Saw the Ballet Russe when Nijinsky still bared / His chest, could quote the illuminata / In the original Italian.” —Jason Schneiderman, “The Disease Collector” @fourwaybooks.bsky.social

THE DISEASE COLLECTOR. Odd word: culture, as though this swab cared About art and music, loved the opera, Saw the Ballet Russe when Nijinsky still bared His chest, could quote the illuminata In the original Italian. As though this petri dish Were a center of learning, and parents wished For their children to go there, like Harvard or Yale, As though a positive answer would not pale My cheeks, or force me to wholly rearrange My life around pills and doctor’s visits; Force me to find old lovers and tricks, Warn that their bodies may too grow strange; To play the old game of who gave it to whom, Gently lowering voices, alone in one’s room. Jason Schneiderman

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Simeon Berry @simeonberry.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

(53/61) “would grandmother’s diamonds / close their heartsparks / in the corner of the closet / yellow like the eyes of cockroaches?” —Toi Derricotte, “Poem for My Father” (Captivity) @upittpress.bsky.social #61WomenPoets #WOC #61Books61Days #TheSealeyChallenge #SeptWomenPoets

The cover of Toi Derricotte’s Captivity: a grille of five, slanting black bars against a red background

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Simeon Berry @simeonberry.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

“The last time I felt like this, / I was buried in the specifics of a bagel I shared with a friend, / and he told me that I really needed to get laid. // At this point, you’re thinking / that I have a problem with food. / But I don’t” — @lauralminor.bsky.social, “Flowers as Mind Control”

FLOWERS AS MIND CONTROL. I want the good Parmesan, the thinly shaved stuff they keep in the cheese cooler that stands alone. This morning, I wanted to kill myself. But I can’t get to New York for a last slice, so this Parmesan will have to do. I look at Myrtle, my dog that will not go when it's been storming, even if it’s been days. I thought, You saved me once. I should get the good cheese, for you, who are weirdly afraid. I could feel the silence that belongs to everyone as I pulled into my very last parking spot. I’d been crying for a time, and the rain made the town bloat like a fresh bun. And then, the cute man I saw the other night at the bar walked toward my car—

I will say the flowers here in Tallahassee are really something. I use them as nostalgic symbols for when my brain and my heart were calm, when I used to watch my brother fall asleep on a blanket my mother made from velvety scraps, and it was always in front of a sliding glass door while it rained—if the cute man walks into the store, now, just a passing pair of downcast frames, I’ll go home,

do all the things I have to do, and make sense of this phantom moment tomorrow, but he passed the store and kept walking—it’s funny how we haggle away our most precious gifts for stories of romance fumbled down like a game of Telephone. I bought a tomato and drove home. I thought about my cousin who overdosed in a seaside motel how awful we are when our cards are pressed to the level of dread. The last time I felt like this, I was buried in the specifics of a bagel I shared with a friend, and he told me that I really needed to get laid. At this point, you’re thinking that I have a problem with food. But I don’t. And this age is troubling enough for a person to strap an explosive vest to their body and pull the ripcord on everyone’s misery—I’m not going to kill myself. I’m certain that by tomorrow, I will be a great person. I’m someone, a rare flower. I have pictures to prove it. Laura Minor

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Simeon Berry @simeonberry.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

(52/61) “All night the millennial ice, all night the dread, / all night the saving eminence that won’t wake up // and the darker eminence that will.” —Quan Barry, “Galilee” (Water Puppets) @upittpress.bsky.social #61WomenPoets #WOC #61Books61Days #TheSealeyChallenge #SeptWomenPoets

The cover of Quan Barry’s Water Puppets: a photograph of a fiery flare from a pipe at the top of metal scaffolding rising out of the water against a blue sky.

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Simeon Berry @simeonberry.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

“Virginia Woolf, incested / through her childhood, wrote / that she imagined herself / growing up inside a grape. / Grapes are sealed and safe. / You wouldn’t quite float / in one” —Elizabeth Alexander, “Fugue”

FUGUE. Virginia Woolf, incested through her childhood, wrote that she imagined herself growing up inside a grape. Grapes are sealed and safe. You wouldn’t quite float in one; you’d sit locked in enough moisture to keep from drying out, the world outside through gelid green. Picture everyone’s edges smudged. Picture everyone a green as delicate

as a Ming celadon. Picture yourself a mollusk with an unsegmented body in a skin so tight and taut that you’d be safe. You could ruminate all night about the difference between “taut” and “tight,” “molest” and “incest.” “Taut” means tightly-drawn, high-strung. What is tight is structured so as not to permit passage of liquid or gas, air, or light. Elizabeth Alexander

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Simeon Berry @simeonberry.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

(50/61) “On omma’s death day, / I forgo the forbidden: // peaches, garlic, red spice” —Bo Hee Moon, “Gijesa (기제사): November 10, 1992” (Birthstones in the Province of Mercy) @milkweededitions.bsky.social #61WomenPoets #WOC #61Books61Days #TheSealeyChallenge #SeptWomenPoets

The cover of Bo Hee Moon’s Birthstones in the Province of Mercy: a painting of several greenish pagoda-style buildings

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Simeon Berry @simeonberry.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

(51/61) “She decided she would keep it— / the anger that was not yet contempt / for you—like a balloon tied to the wrist, / casting its little shadow, little stigma.” —Willie Lin, “Object Lesson” (Conversation Among Stones) @boa-editions.bsky.social #WOC #TheSealeyChallenge #SeptWomenPoets

The cover of Willie Lin’s Conversation Among Stones: a painting of hazy, somewhat oval white shapes against a red background

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Simeon Berry @simeonberry.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

“What is the Greek word for mercy? / What is the capital of Kansas? / Who perished in the fire, / made anonymous by ash / but mourned all the same, in public?” — @paulmguest.bsky.social, “Hey Siri”

HEY SIRI. What is the Greek word for mercy? What is the capital of Kansas? Who perished in the fire, made anonymous by ash but mourned all the same, in public? Who grieves the dawn? Who wrote down the directions to the old farm and the haunted house and the mill which has been repurposed? Who is the speaker of the pained jeremiad? The delicate ode whispered to the rain. This poem which should have been a riddle. A knock-knock joke. Who is there? Who is waiting at the door?

In the bright morning, where is the fire? And who squeezed the trigger? Who was inspired by safely pedestrian suffering? Enlivened, even. I should not exclude myself from this. At night it’s easy, nothing at all, to feel one’s chest ache with beauty because of the stars which keen throughout the vacuum. How long ago did John Keats die and was it raining then, as in a dream? I don’t understand beauty. How it insists. upon itself. You, this trembling day. Never mind. Paul Guest

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Simeon Berry @simeonberry.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

“21. out of wedlock, wedlocked 22. planks nailed across kitchen doorway for a bar; living room turned into dance floor 23. drinking canned heat” —C.D. Wright, “Remarks on Color” @ugapress.bsky.social

REMARKS ON COLOR. 1. highway patched with blacktop, service station at the crossroads. 2. cream soda in the popbox, man sitting on the popbox. 3. a fully grown man. 4. filthy toilets, just hold it a little while longer. 5. shacks ringed with daylilies, then a columned house in shade. 6. condensation off soybeans. 7. someone known as Skeeter. 8. his whole life. 9. flatbed loaded with striped melons. 10. Lopez’s white car at JB’s mother’s house. 11. katydids crepitating in the tail grass. 12. gar wrapping itself in your line. 13. gourds strung between poles. 14. imagine a tribe of color-blind people, and there could easily be one, they would not have the same color concepts as we do.

15. that’s trumpet vine; that’s what we call potato vine. 16. no potatoes come of it though. 17. no potatoes I know. 18. I come back here about three years ago to see if I could eke out a living then I run on to Rhonda. 19. help me Rhonda help help me Rhonda. 20. E-Z on E-Z off. 21. out of wedlock, wedlocked. 22. planks nailed across kitchen doorway for a bar; living room turned into dance floor. 23. drinking canned heat. 24. the shit can make you permanently blind. 25. sizzling nights. 26. what do you suppose became of Fontella Bass. 27. get your own sound then notes go with your sound—it’s like a color, my color—I’m black brown with a little red-orange in my skin. 28. red looks good on me. 29. And yet we could imagine circumstances under which we would say, these people see other colors in addition to

ours. 30. what the Swede concluded: if you want to know what’s the matter with blacks in America study the other side of the color line. 31. I am just telling you what the man figured out. 32. there is, after all, no commonly accepted criterion for what is a color unless it is one of our colors. 33. check this: 34. at the time of his death Presley’s was the second most reproduced image in the world. 35. the first was Mickey Mouse. 36. Lansky Brothers—down on Beale—outfitted the Johns of Memphis. 37. and Elvis. 38. R-U ready for Jesus R-U packed up. 39. just don’t compare me to any white musicians. 40. take me witcha man when you go. C.D. Wright.

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Simeon Berry @simeonberry.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

(49/61) “My name, Camille, means witness at the sacrifice.” —Camille Dungy, “New Address” (America, A Love Story) @weslpress.bsky.social #61WomenPoets #WOC #61Books61Days #TheSealeyChallenge #SeptWomenPoets

The cover of Camille Dungy’s America, A Love Story: a photograph of a night sky with stars

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Simeon Berry @simeonberry.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

“Don’t mess with me / ’Cause I have my Lone Ranger / Six-shooter. I can hurt / You with questions / Like silver bullets.” —Yusef Komunyakaa, “Venus’s-Flytraps” @weslpress.bsky.social www.slowdownshow.org/episode/2024...

slowdownshow.org

1051: Venus's Flytraps

Today’s poem is Venus's-Flytraps by Yusef Komunyakaa.

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Simeon Berry @simeonberry.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

(48/61) “You said / There’s a pack of dogs inside me / threatening to eat its leader who is wounded. / I said Let them.” —Brynn Saito, “First Incarnation” (The Palace of Contemplating Departure) @redhenpress.bsky.social #61WomenPoets #WOC #61Books61Days #TheSealeyChallenge #SeptWomenPoets

The cover of Brynn Saito’s The Palace of Contemplating Departure: a painting of a red canoe in an aqua sea under a dark sky

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Simeon Berry @simeonberry.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

“There are some months when all art feels worthless / And life feels thin, and weak and full of spite / And the pastel hysteria of spring of outside the window” —Hera Lindsay Bird www.buzzingwire.org/strange-face...

buzzingwire.org

Strange Faces Other Minds 33: Watching six seasons of the Nanny while my long-term relationship slowly fell apart – Buzzing Wire Vaguely Song

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Simeon Berry @simeonberry.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

(47/61) “a mouse in / the house, her lover says / it has a very tiny heart, / you need only chase / it until it tires” —Shin Yu Pai, “This Is Not My Story” (Adamantine) White Pine Press #61WomenPoets #WOC #61Books61Days #TheSealeyChallenge #SeptWomenPoets

The cover of Shin Yu Pai’s Adamantine: a black-and-white photograph of a graffiti’d stone sculpture of a hand rising out of desert earth under a cloud-streaked sky

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Simeon Berry @simeonberry.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

“Nell, the remaining half of the team, stands by the grave and screams. The moot cry of pointless opposition, in opera it is usually soprano. At the first Olympics the athletes wrestled naked so nothing would be hidden.” —Rodney Jones, “For a long time after...” @lsupress.bsky.social

For a long time after Charlie the gelding dies and my grandfather borrows a tractor, drags his body to a little hill above the creek and buries him, Nell, the remaining half of the team, stands by the grave and screams. The moot cry of pointless opposition, in opera it is usually soprano. At the first Olympics the athletes wrestled naked so nothing would be hidden. At their son’s first birthday party Jen blurts out, in front of everyone, to her husband who has hanged himself and to the gods of fate and oblivion, “Goddammit, Josh. You get to be dead. I have to be at Chuck E. Cheese.” Rodney Jones

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Simeon Berry @simeonberry.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

(46/61) “Clicks of the keyboard sound like high heels walking / nowhere in particular.” — @nezhukumatathil.bsky.social, “Firefly Ars Poetica” (Night Owl) Ecco #61WomenPoets #WOC #61Books61Days #TheSealeyChallenge #SeptWomenPoets

The cover of Aimee Nezhukumatathil’s Night Owl: a painting of two trees reflecting in the water against a sunset and a dark-blue sky speckled with stars

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Simeon Berry @simeonberry.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

“She enjoyed watching pro wrestlers on television. Her favorite was Gorgeous George. // And she loved the piano player Liberace. / I remember the rhinestones on his cape. // She spoke very little.” —Rae Armantrout @weslpress.bsky.social www.theatlantic.com/books/archiv...

theatlantic.com

Specimens

A poem for Sunday

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Simeon Berry @simeonberry.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

(45/61) “He has the receipts: / a scar on his breast / that I’ve cleaned like a smudge on a window.” —Hafizah Geter ( @hafizah.bsky.social), “Naming Ceremony” (Un-American) @weslpress.bsky.social #61WomenPoets #WOC #61Books61Days #TheSealeyChallenge #SeptWomenPoets

The cover of Hafizah Geter’s Un-American: a painting of a pregnant black woman with her hair clipped in the back of her head, wearing a gold necklace, pearl earrings, a gold pearl bracelet, and a satiny, aqua-colored bathrobe

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Simeon Berry @simeonberry.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

“On the map I have, the topographic lines of this hill look like God forgot to wipe away his fingerprint before he got in his Bible and fled.” —Charles Rafferty, “Evidence” @boa-editions.bsky.social

EVIDENCE. On the map I have, the topographic lines of this hill look like God forgot to wipe away his fingerprint before he got in his Bible and fled. I knew one of the murdered boys. I had handed him a tissue once, to wipe his nose, as my daughter played piano at her recital. The apologists are full of mysterious ways, but I know evil when I see it. I can feel the thumb above me now, pressing down, fitting the grooves of this hillside. Charles Rafferty

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Simeon Berry @simeonberry.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

(44/61) “Why would this Portuguese sailor come over to me and in his broken English point to the tattoo of a geisha as if I would identify with it. And I did a little.” —Kimiko Hahn, “B-O-A-T” (The Narrow Road to the Interior) W. W. Norton & Company #WOC #TheSealeyChallenge #SeptWomenPoets

The cover of Kimiko Hahn’s The Narrow Road to the Interior: a watercolor of light blue trees with white blossoms in a green field under an orange and red sky

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Simeon Berry @simeonberry.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

(43/61) “You film it, disaffected by the cold and the faces turning like leaves in a blue autumn.” — @aditimachado.bsky.social, “Material Witness” (Material Witness) Nightboat Books #61WomenPoets #WOC #61Books61Days #TheSealeyChallenge #SeptWomenPoets

The cover of Aditi Machado’s Material Witness: a red, dotted outline portrait of a person’s head and shoulders

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Simeon Berry @simeonberry.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

“Bloody, slick, and fierce, / I slid out of the womb. / My heart was underfed. / My mouth began to foam. // At six I bit my lip / and took to backyard voguing: / I struck a rigid pose / in vigilante leggings.” — @randallmann.bsky.social, “Stable”

STABLE. Bloody, slick, and fierce, I slid out of the womb. My heart was underfed. My mouth began to foam. At six I bit my lip and took to backyard voguing: I struck a rigid pose in vigilante leggings. I stole our family hearse. I had the goods to sell. My underpants were used: he liked that they were small. At twenty-one I bought a microwave and warmed

a frozen Hungry Man. My bachelorhood, confirmed. (For six read seventeen, for microwave read purse, for Hungry read Alone, for hearse and womb read horse.) I have a private stable. I roll around and whinny. I’m dying to be groomed. So here’s your pile of money, and there’s my pile of oats. I’ll let you brush my mane. Just promise me you’ll keep your mouth away from mine. Randall Mann

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Simeon Berry @simeonberry.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

(42/61) “You are no one’s enigma / or experiment.” —Amy M. Alvarez, “How to Date a White Boy” (Makeshift Altar) @kentuckypress.bsky.social #61WomenPoets #WOC #61Books61Days #TheSealeyChallenge #SeptWomenPoets

The cover of Amy M. Alvarez’s Makeshift Altar: a photograph of an alter with black African mask, two small golden bowls, gold chains, and a headdress of black plants, white feathers, and red roses, against a pink background.

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Simeon Berry @simeonberry.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

“Tonight, everything is strict with cold, / the houses closed, the ice botched by skaters. / I am tired of saying things about the world” —Lynn Emanuel, “Inspiration” @illinoispress.bsky.social radio.wpsu.org/2021-12-17/p...

radio.wpsu.org

Poetry Moment: Lynn Emanuel and 'Inspiration'

On this episode of Poetry Moment on WPSU, Penn State Laureate Shara McCallum looks at the work of Lynn Emanuel and her poem "Inspiration."

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Simeon Berry @simeonberry.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

(41/61) “The sea is there, and during / the rainy / season you cannot ask / for more / water or salt.” —Rosamond S. King, “In search of a word” (Rock-Salt-Stone) Nightboat Books #61WomenPoets #WOC #61Books61Days #TheSealeyChallenge #SeptWomenPoets

The cover of Rosamond S. King’s Rock-Salt-Stone: a photograph of a cluster of small black mounds in front of the corner of a sandy-looking beige and orange wall

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Simeon Berry @simeonberry.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

“one day after sex / in a century of bad sex / the other one asked Mz N / did I leave you / on the edge / never having had an orgasm / as far as she knew / she sd / quite definitively / no” —Maureen N. McLane, “Mz. N: the serial”

from Miz N: the serial. One year Miz N began her great project of investigative touch. Like everything, it came about through reading and happenstance. Miz N had a friend who said I do it, and then I worry, what if my roommate hears? What if? Miz N wondered, went home, and discovered a new octave. Miz N sometimes thinks what N stands for: Nothing. One day she said, nihilism, in school & the teacher paused, chalk between her fingers like her longed-for cigarette. What’s nihilism, another student said. I thought

it was neehilism. This was another example of Miz N bringing up topics that went Nowhere. the blackest black is not so black it cannot take a blacker black, so Miz N thinks, the void would speak, if void could speak, or, of color, think. Miz N is writing what she hopes will be a masterpiece: Mispronunciation: the definitive autobiography. She only includes the bloopers she remembers. She is very strict like that. What’s vá-gi-na

hard g, she called to her parents, age five, when they’d plopped her on the sofa with a picture book to help her learn where babies. Some years later, she told a story at dinner about being very angry with a persecuting teacher. I spoke, she said, with great ve-hé-mence. Her father laughed a somewhat unkind laugh, and asked her to repeat it. She did & once again he laughed. Miz N vehemently objects to the making fun of children who struggle every day to get their words and bodies aligned. one day after sex

in a century of bad sex, the other one asked Miz N, did I leave you on the edge? never having had an orgasm, as far as she knew, she said, quite definitively, no. how would she know such an edge? are you sure? the other persisted. Miz N thought again. she could say quite definitively, oh yes, here I am on the edge where you left me, the edge of a certain abyss, but this she knew was the answer to a question no one was asking. Maureen N. McLane

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Simeon Berry @simeonberry.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

(40/61) “driven across the country / with half-filled suitcases in a beat-up sedan— / warming my hands in a blurry Denny’s, / my mother giving me medicine with ice cream” — @jennyqi.bsky.social, “Little Fires” (Focal Point) Steel Toe Books #61WomenPoets #WOC #TheSealeyChallenge #SeptWomenPoets

The cover of Jenny Qi’s Focal Point: a photograph of orange clouds in a blue sky funneling toward a point over a darkened landscape

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Reposted by Simeon Berry

Todd Dillard @toddedillard.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

I will say some of the push for AI in writing is how a lot of non-AI writers think the point of writing is to get published and no, the point of writing is to remove the weird little thing from your body and teach it tricks

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Simeon Berry @simeonberry.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

“the bearer of this letter / (typhoons kaboom in his headphones) / is a tremendous new talent / who kissed me hard / wearing his ‘I’ve had five glasses of wine’ face / he doesn’t wish to be domesticated / so make him see stars!” —Amy Gerstler, “Fourteen Sonnets”

from Fourteen Sonnets. 12. the bearer of this letter (typhoons kaboom in his headphones) is a tremendous new talent who kissed me hard wearing his “I’ve had five glasses of wine” face. he doesn’t wish to be domesticated, so make him see stars! but is it a present if he buys it for you with your own dough? we return to our burrow in a rural graveyard. something ancient is happening. rinsed, bitterish, stricken, we shed our clothes as woodpeckers chisel a nest and dance uninhibited. 13. little girls cherish her protection. a swindler’s widow, wildcat in human shape, headed in a less hysterical direction. negative confession, she said, means deny everything

to escape their face-melting gaze, but don’t scare them away. they’re crocheting a sword and a shield for me aboard the party barge, marooned by summer floods, turbulence, and shock waves. forbidden to disobey or shake your fist at. you can tell whoever the fuck you want to about this. 14. an entity old as the universe kicked in the headlights of her car. look how she blushes! shrines sprang up like mushrooms seconds after the explosion. canoes became the sole means of transport. jars of ancient light lit the way through the rainforest like orchids held aloft by a man with an extraordinary forehead, who shamefacedly weeps his way downriver, having murdered apple orchards back home. an anxious nation heads for the exits, though of course she could never express it. while the green sea flaps ceaselessly at your feet. Amy Gerstler

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Simeon Berry @simeonberry.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

(39/61) “I paid off the debt with a stone that I knew to be worthless.” —Isabelle Baafi, “One side of a conversation with the bailiff at my door” (Chaotic Good) @weslpress.bsky.social #61WomenPoets #WOC #61Books61Days #TheSealeyChallenge #SeptWomenPoets

The cover of Isabelle Baafi’s Chaotic Good: an abstract painting of a red figure stepping out of a lavender ring with other small black-and-white figures still inside it, into a blue, aquatic landscape bordered by reaching red hands.

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Simeon Berry @simeonberry.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

“My mother is tired / and deep in her sartorial woods; / she has no eyes to scowl, / no ears to eavesdrop, / no voice to berate me now.” —Marilyn Chin, “Where is the Moralizer, Your Mother?” @milkweededitions.bsky.social

WHERE IS THE MORALIZER, YOUR MOTHER? 1. A child in the courtyard is serious in her game. She avoids a crack lest she break her mother’s back. She sidesteps a line to preserve her mother’s spine. 2. I dreamt of the Goddess of Mercy floating in the estuary. Did you not see her there, vertical among the eelgrass? The pale one, was it not she, the one with the small forehead? 3. Roberto, are you sleeping, or just pretending to be asleep? Your eyes neither open nor closed: half-black in the netherworld, half-green in longing. 4. I shall love you into eternity. Eternity as in a fly drinking sleep from an infant’s eye. Eternity as in its leg, black and bent,

mocking the universe. 5. Where is the door to the bedroom? Mei Ling, where is the moralizer, your mother? She was walking in as you were walking out. 6. Again, again, we tell them our story. Once upon a time: he was thirty-three, she, 4987, not counting the earlier stages of the Shang. 7. Or: In the forest, a dead deer lies, bound up with string. In the forest, a dead deer lies, bound up with string. 8. My mother is tired and deep in her sartorial woods; she has no eyes to scowl, no ears to eavesdrop, no voice to berate me now. Marilyn Chin

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Simeon Berry @simeonberry.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

(38/61) “whose smile never swam inside / an ultrasound hum the throat swallowed / before it became breath” —Jasminne Mendez, “Inheritance” (City Without Altar) @noemipress.bsky.social #61WomenPoets #WOC #61Books61Days #TheSealeyChallenge #SeptWomenPoets

The cover of Jasminne Mendez’s City Without Altar: a photograph of two crooked hands inside panty hose grasping white flower blossoms

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Simeon Berry @simeonberry.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

“I see you in every man who leans back in his chair, quiet until he’s ready to push into a pause a statement like, ‘That’s a terrible question,’ about the one I just asked.” —Kathleen Kirk, “Prose Sonnet to the Silent Father”

PROSE SONNET TO THE SILENT FATHER. 1. I won’t know what to say in my next letter, since you have not answered the last and the one before. 2. I see you in every man who leans back in his chair, quiet until he’s ready to push into a pause a statement like, “That’s a terrible question,” about the one I just asked. 3. My husband sat crying in his chair, I want to tell you, while I sang in the other room and our daughter screamed, “Stop singing!” 4. He cried for his own father, left behind in Cuba, who played the piano. 5. “because he didn’t get to hear his papi sing,” my daughter tells me later, “and he was still sad even with me sitting in his lap.” 6. “Next time will you let me sing?”

7. 8. Here is a letter I have revised and torn to pieces, an action you will call cliched and sentimental. 9. You are like a poetry teacher. 10. I need to learn how to say the opposite of what I mean but without irony. 11. (a prose tactic, yours). 12. I need to learn how to leave silence at the center. 13. and still be able to sign my name to it. 14. as if it were written by me. Kathleen Kirk

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Simeon Berry @simeonberry.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

(37/61) “to swallow / bruise / that begins / in dark blue” — @omotarajames.bsky.social, “Exhibition of the Queered Woman” (Song of My Softening) Alice James Books #61WomenPoets #WOC #61Books61Days #TheSealeyChallenge #SeptWomenPoets

The cover of Omotara James’ Song of My Softening: a photograph of a topless Black woman with braids wearing a gold skirt with her back turned and her arms raised, against a green background

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