Featured Poet: Laura Sims

Laura Sims is the author of two books of poetry: Stranger (Fence Books, forthcoming in 2009) and Practice, Restraint (Fence Books, 2005). She has also published four chapbooks, including Bank Book (Answer Tag Press) and Corrections (Bronze Skull Press). Her poems are forthcoming in the journals CAB/NET, Parcel, Colorado Review, and Denver Quarterly. She teaches creative writing, composition, and professional communication in Madison, Wisconsin.

See the pines


That are



“Such as they are”



And the ones that escaped





There were horrors


Then horrors

Were stacked onto those







What have you done?

Nothing—


Grafted, shaved

My god is this a man

I rode around and rode around
The middle of the world

I cleaned myself
A bottle and inside

She fell on top of me
Shocked, the human beings

I lied her on the floor
I said, “I lied her on the floor”

I don’t
I don’t deny (I wasn’t there) but

I’d had the dearest little dream

I was good
Or good enough
And careful

It was
Both
Fell backward on the bed
And she became a woman being done to

When I went hunting squirrels I felt

The low sound



When the glass jug shuddered



In the earth


*


We were trapped by the island

In the middle of the store


We stood side-by-side but only the rifle

Could touch us both


Then the sound, oh…just a low sound


*


Then I

Stepped

Around the island

I forgot

*
My sweatshirt stained with blood

It’s winter

I fear

I’ve committed a crime

I woke up and asked, Where’s

my mother?

*

I first hold snow

Its molecular structure—

Time

For my personal

History?

This one was brand new

(For a minute)



What made me

Do





Everything

Down



And





Red.

I’m controlled, I am not doing

Interviews. Still




In the marble halls

These poems are excerpted from A Sing Economy (Film Forum Press, 2008)

Copyright 2008 Laura Sims