Sandra Simonds

To the Reader

I take one last gulp of dark red wine

and think how lucky I am to be down here

among the poets and how amazing it is

that to be a poet one has only simply to walk

into a bar of glittering minerals and genitals

and declare (but very softly) “I am a poet”

and how it is also so difficult to be a poet

since Anne and I have to text each other

the word “yuck” about the poets

who have walked into the bar

and declared themselves poets when they

chop up women in their poems

I don’t like it when a poet

I don’t know comes up to me in a bar

and puts his hand on my shoulder even if

he is drunk I don’t like it when he asks me if he makes

me nervous I am so excited that this is turning

into a revenge poem and ashamed about this also

but it makes me happy that Anne and Whit and Matt and Geoffrey

will know this situation exactly I want to say

No you don’t make me nervous

You’re pissing me off! Get out of my face! Any man

who places his heavy hand on a woman’s

shoulder in a bar who did not ask for it

Is not a poet and down here

among the poets we are burning the most

precious minerals and stones: emeralds, amethysts

gold, copper and we are burning the sullenest

mauve flowers and you should see how they light up

when you torch them they turn into the visions

we have poured wine over these minerals and Katy has made

waffles and Whit texts me that he

has put on his purple cape and our language is like a mine

and our futures are converging on the language

of the sun even though it rains

constantly down here among the poets

and some people will spend thousands

of dollars to taste the air in this cave

of minerals among the poets but no

amount of money can bring you to our

cave because when you pay for an experience

that you could have had just through the simple

declaration “I am a poet” 

then the experience collapses

We have declared sovereignty

on friendship and even the most beautiful selfies

will self- destruct on the eve of November the 8^th 2033

My friends and I have walked all day and all night

and a thousand Tahitis and Fijis and cocaine and motorcycles

have fallen very far into our language

and when Whit and I split a room

at the Days Inn and hell tells me “I like dick”

the sun is blasting her radio and no one tells her to shut up

I take one last gulp of wine and think of

you, my reader, endlessly, for you have also

declared yourself a poet and the moon is unbearable

as she should be and love is some impossible confusion

as it should be and I, with this poem, Guillermo, take

Mora’s naked woman down from his friend’s head because she needs

a blanket and some water and no one should have to spend an eternity

on a poet’s head! And she also needs to be at the Days Inn

with us discussing these very issues

Víctor Valera Mora, I have reversed the lines of your poem

so that you will never crash your Maserati

and all of us poets but especially the poets

of revolutionary inclinations will go into the city of Caracas

or Los Angeles to affirm that we must stop working

and never ascend from this cave to the surface

of stupid administrators and Mora, I also turn women

into weapons of war and I think it’s funny when all the poets

who live in shitty apartments get to a certain age and sheepishly

ask one another if they are going to ever buy a house

Never! No poet should ever have a jacuzzi I want

A Jacuzzi! We must stop working so we can love again

and pull ourselves from this stupid exile

and everyone will learn the language of exile to burn it up

The sun and the moon and the future are on our side

and when I when I fuck my husband in the morning

and walk into the city with sperm splashing inside of me—

with the infinite universe going everywhere inside my flesh and pulling

my cells along some continuum of nothingness—I will never be

on the surface—I will always be naked down here

among the poets and my body which is always underneath everything

calls out and thinks of you constantly, my reader.

I take one last red gulp of wine and duck out the door forever.

Sandra Simonds is the author of four collections of poetry, Warsaw Bikini (Bloof Books, 2008), Mother Was a Tragic Girl (Cleveland State University Poetry Center, 2012), The Sonnets (Bloof Books, 2014) and Ventura Highway in the Sunshine (Saturnalia Books, forthcoming in 2015). Her poems have appeared in The Best American Poetry 2014, the American Poetry Review, Fence, Poetry, the Black Warrior Review, the Boston Review and others. She was a recipient of a “reader’s choice” award in 2013 from the Academy of American Poets for her poem “Red Wand” which appeared on Poets.org.