Simeon Berry

@simeonberry.bsky.social

Author of Monograph (National Poetry Series, UGA Press) & Ampersand Revisited (National Poetry Series, Fence Books). Posts daily poems by others. he/him

@simeonberry.bsky.social

“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
@simeonberry.bsky.social

“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
@simeonberry.bsky.social

“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
@simeonberry.bsky.social

“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
@simeonberry.bsky.social

“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 dateand 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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