Current
Issue
Fall 2026 / Volume 13.1
Sandra Simonds
—
Sleeping with Li Po
Only the moon would make him come,
he said pouring himself a glass of Baijiu.
He asked if I could gather
water chestnuts barefoot
in the green forest
and sing under the stars.
That turns you on? I asked, surprised.
Yes, he said, that and the image
of herons in moonlight; all night
we lay in a bed of white clouds.
Sleeping with Wallace Stevens
His body was an insurance document,
so unremarkable and long. So long
and lacking the sumptuous nature
of his poems! I asked where he kept
his palm trees in twilight, his terraces of sand?
Where do you hold, dear Wallace,
your evergreen hemlocks and nocturnal halls?
Not in my body. Not in my brain.
He unwrapped the towel tied around his torso
and cannonballed off the balcony
into the swimming pool.
Sandra Simonds is the author of nine books of poetry and a novel, including Burning Oracle (Wesleyan University Press, 2026) and Assia (Noemi Press, 2023), which won a Vermont Book Award in Fiction and has been optioned for film. She writes poetry reviews for the New York Times and lives in Tallahassee, Florida.
