iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Simeon Berry @simeonberry.bsky.social · 12h

Reading tonight at Speak Up at Walnut Street Cafe,157 Walnut St., Lynn MA! All-new poems never read before in public! Sequel to Monograph! Open mic: 7:30-830pm, Feature: 8:30-9:00pm! Random Cat for the Algorithm!

A black and white photo of a black cat in a tilted laundry basket on a bed.

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Simeon Berry @simeonberry.bsky.social · 16h

“Today the part / of love will be played // by regret. Memory / will be played // by what if, tragedy / by the saxophonist. // Silence will be played / by silence. There will // be no intermission.” —Andrea Cohen, “Matinée” @fourwaybooks.bsky.social www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazi...

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Simeon Berry @simeonberry.bsky.social · 13/10/2026

“Roving gold Segovia / your Roman aqueduct / your closed museum / Machado’s piss pot / tan fields of wheat” —Spencer Reece, “La Santa Cena” @fsgbooks.bsky.social

LA SANTA CENA. for Revered Scott Walters.Roving gold Segovia, your Roman aqueduct, your closed museum. Machado’s piss pot, tan fields of wheat. the large buses chuff. doors always locked. we are five, no, four, stuck in a storefront. a stained rained-on page taped to the tinted glass lists our hour wrong. once a month, I say mass, hold my box that snaps,

soiled by the palms of our priest shot dead under that squat, fat, teeny-weeny dictator. corrugated nicked cover. inside, the host molds. the wine, turpentine. they don’t listen much. my accent is off, more of a loud cough broken up by a lisp. I measure our savior. Todo está preparado. Acercaos a la mesa de Dios. it’s over quick. they feed me tortilla de patatas, Coke,

and tarta de Santiago. this gruff yellow land, drenched in manure. Plath hated Spain. she was young. Ted hadn't left yet. this republic requires respect. age inures. the large sky like foil, crackles in the olive grove. I lay my old head on the foldout bed, where a mattress coil pokes my backbone. Oh, to be loved like this. Spencer Reece.

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Simeon Berry @simeonberry.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

“My father, / lymph node masses fading from / his x-rays, said surviving one thing / means another comes and kills you. / He’s dead, and so, I trust him.” —John Murillo, “On Confessionalism” @commonmag.bsky.social @fourwaybooks.bsky.social www.thecommononline.org/on-confessio...

thecommononline.org

On Confessionalism

JOHN MURILLO <br> I’m standing / in a section 8 apartment parking lot, / pistol cocked, and staring down / at this man, then up into the mug / of an old woman staring, watering / the single sad flowe...

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Simeon Berry @simeonberry.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

Peoples, I present my first unequivocal love poem in 30 years. Find out why I think Werner Herzog should be teleported into Wuthering Heights so he can tell Cathy that the moors outside are savage and meaningless, like her pianoforte playing. @eldiagram.bsky.social thediagram.com/26_3/berry.h...

thediagram.com

DIAGRAM :: Simeon Berry

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Simeon Berry @simeonberry.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

“Back then it seemed that wherever a girl took off her clothes / the police would find her— / in the backs of cars or beside the dark night ponds, opening / like a green leaf across / some boy’s knees” —Lucia Perillo, “Skin”

SKIN. Back then it seemed that wherever a girl took off her clothes the police would find her—in the backs of cars or beside the dark night ponds, opening like a green leaf across some boy’s knees, the skin so white and taut beneath the moon, it was almost too terrible, too beautiful to look at, a tinderbox, though she did not know. But the men who came beating the night rushes with their flashlights and thighs—they knew. About Helen, about how a body could cause the fall of Troy and the death of a perfectly good king. So they read the boy his rights and shoved him spread-legged against the car while the girl hopped barefoot on the asphalt, cloaked in a wood rescue blanket. Or sometimes girls fled so their fathers wouldn’t hit them, their white legs flashing as they ran. And the boys were handcuffed just until their wrists had welts and let off half a block from home.

God for how many years did I believe there were truly laws against such things, laws of adulthood: no yelling out of cars in traffic tunnels, no walking without shoes, no singing foolish songs in public places. Or else they could lock you in jail or, as good as condemning you to death, tell both your lower- and upper-case Catholic fathers. And out of all these crimes, unveiling the body was of course the worst, as though something about the skin’s phosphorescence, its surface as velvet as a deer’s new horn, could drive not only men but civilization mad, could lead us to unspeakable cruelties. There were elders who from experience understood these things much better than we. And it's true: remembering I had that kind of skin does drive me half-crazy with loss. Skin like the spathe of a broad white lily on the first morning it unfurls. Lucia Perillo

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

“She married a man called Jerry, who turned out to be / a hat-stand in disguise. She contracted a disease / transmitted by celibacy. She slept in a violin case, smoking / rosin” — @carolinebirduk.bsky.social, “Damage” @carcanet.bsky.social

DAMAGE. Her teddy bear eloped with her mother. Her father went to buy flowers for himself on Father’s Day and never came home. Her grandma was a wastepaper basket. She was raised by staplers. Her skin was deathly white. Her birthmark was the shape of Africa. No one explained anything to her. She excelled at school until she was abused by her own calculator. She ran away from home to join a troupe of travelling accountants. She could balance a Filofax on her head and yawn at the same time. Audiences loved her. She married a man called Jerry, who turned out to be a hat-stand in disguise. She contracted a disease transmitted by celibacy. She slept in a violin case, smoking rosin. She lost all pleasurable sensation in her ears. She drank to forget. She drank to remember where she’d left her bike. You met her during the winter. She said, “I need someone to save me.” You did what any sensible person would have done. Caroline Bird

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

“I take thee / stoned / and generous / in the woods behind / the pasture, / I take thee drunk / in our first apartment’s shower, / pulling the towel bar down, / losing my deposit.” — @rebeccahazelstaff.bsky.social, “The Husband Proposes” @lsupress.bsky.social

THE HUSBAND PROPOSES. A girl like you, reclining on your elbows, wearing nothing but a black cowboy hat, pleased to be so thoroughly yourself, what can I do but take thee? I take thee behind the barn while the barn cat circles, I take thee against a bureau and every drawer applauds, I take thee stoned and generous in the woods behind the pasture, I take thee drunk in our first apartment’s shower, pulling the towel bar down,

losing my deposit. And yes, I take thee while you still love another more than I’d like, so I take thee to the courthouse and request a record of the missionary position because your mouth is a counterfeit I’ll spend and spend, and you blush because you cannot blush sincerely. You are so thoroughly yourself, and in that way, always naked. Place that Stetson on your head just so, I take thee as you were and as you are, and forge my name to yours. Rebecca Hazelton

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Simeon Berry @simeonberry.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

“your yaya, / who after the first two, told her doctor / that was it, but he said No, the rule was six / and after the third one when she thought she would lose her mind / and after the fifth one when she did, he said No again” —Valencia Robin, “Ask Your Grandmother” @vqr.bsky.social

ASK YOUR GRANDMOTHER. Ask your grandmother why she had six children, your mother’s mother who was good at math and science, yet got married straight out of high school, your nana, your yaya who, after the first two, told her doctor that was it, but he said No, the rule was six and after the third one when she thought she would lose her mind and after the fifth one when she did, he said No again, your grandmother, who was poor but not Mexican or American Indian or Black and so never had to worry about going to the state clinic for an appendectomy and leaving without her uterus—no, she was white and married, which meant she could have as many children as her doctor, the AMA—some guys in a room—decided, your grandmother who’s looking at you as if to say, you’ve been to college—how could you not know this. Valencia Robin

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Simeon Berry @simeonberry.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

“we’re at dinner with our mom who we don’t know / is on cocaine, who’s wearing sunglasses & having / a hard time tasting her food” —Jeremy Radin, “Tony Roma’s” @sixthfinch.bsky.social sixthfinch.com/radin1.html

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Simeon Berry @simeonberry.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

“The IRS is on your case, / Sending letters, agents. And you just say it’s a bad luck streak? / Christ, she doesn’t even menstruate!” —David Wojahn, “Jerry Lee Lewis’s Secret Marriage to Thirteen-Year-Old First Cousin Revealed During British Isles Tour, 1959. His Manager Speaks”

JERRY LEE LEWIS’S SECRET MARRIAGE TO THIRTEEN-YEAR-OLD COUSIN REVEALED DURING BRITISH ISLES TOUR, 1959. HIS MANAGER SPEAKS: Dumb career move, Killer. The IRS is on your case, Sending letters, agents. And you just say it’s a bad luck streak? Christ, she doesn’t even menstruate! My bookie’d give your pre-vert marriage eight weeks. What do you talk about at night, or need I ask? And get this through your stupid Cracker skull: Your little stunt’s a felony in every state But Arkansas. Get it? Il-leg-al. So go ahead and play piano with your nose, And tear your shirt off singing “High School Confidential.” But the Feds’ll take the Cadillac and clothes, Leave you without a nose to pick. They play hardball. They’ll bleed you until every penny’s spent. Your ass is grass, and where’s my ten percent? David Wojahn

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Simeon Berry @simeonberry.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

“I walked with Glenn from White Moon Insurance / for hours through columns of shimmering firs / and over ponds frozen into opal tables” —David Berman, “Civics”

CIVICS. She had been the court stenographer in the little village for two decades when she disappeared into the mountains. I was part of the search party that day. Snow was pending and the bare branches looked like mounted antlers on the canyon walls. I walked with Glenn from White Moon Insurance for hours through columns of shimmering firs and over ponds frozen into opal tables, until, arriving at an overlook at dusk, we heard the cracking of a hammer echoing through the burnished valley and saw what looked like the old judge and twelve other men and women pitching camp for the night. David Berman

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Simeon Berry @simeonberry.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

“A woman at the bar / has knocked over her bucket of blue, and the countertop is now an ocean populated / by a shiver of gummy shark garnishes.” — @keithkopka.bsky.social, “Bellwether” pvdeye.org/bellwether/

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Simeon Berry @simeonberry.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

“His hymns were vinegar. / A hare’s pelt and stiff / skeleton served as his crossed Christ. // The Bishop of Sinister Ways blessed him. / Ten wizards dressed him in umber.” —R. T. Smith, “The Convert” @lsupress.bsky.social

THE CONVERT. No babe in the barn, Gristle rose in mannequin form from the Well of the Bitter, built his church of crickets, whin, and owl bones. The bog churned his black butter. The crow rose from a rickle of sticks and tendrils to strew a rosary and a story. His hymns were vinegar. A hare’s pelt and stiff skeleton served as his crossed Christ. The Bishop of Sinister Ways blessed him. Ten wizards dressed him in umber. Gristle’s antic Gospel of Loss would shed its text in any storm.

What was left but regrets? He spoke to the vegetation. The fuchsia bush burned unconsumed. The one extant portrait smudged onto shingle gives us the sea frozen green in his single eye, a hook nose, weasel grin, irony in the cut of his bones. He slicked wattle with shit and spittle, ate the rooks raw, hung close to the weather’s hinge. He rocked the goblin cradle and lullabied the poppet. Mockery was his winter defense. His shins bled in penance for something he could never name. His teeth were cold as sleet, his sausage of a swollen tongue

saying love a hundred ways. The shunned monk shocked by Druid dolmens, he fasted, honed his nightdreams toward the skull’s quick miracles, prophets nameless on the desert, a vision of Fire Christ wise in the finch’s perfected eye. He was slim as a skittle, a sinew in wind, the harp with one string, the stolen song. He could rend iron or the silver dove, but the shriving never rendered him whole. “Love,” he always chanted, “twisted, holy love.” And so St. Gristle came at last to know the barrens of Ireland. R. T. Smith

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Simeon Berry @simeonberry.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Thanks for the nocturne, Aimee! 💫

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Simeon Berry @simeonberry.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

“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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