Simeon Berry
Plot
from Fingerling Lakes
When it rains I come talk to Gram
When things are upsetting
When my body
smells like elements
Like a bunch of stupid names
When Dad drives erratically
and says the tavern
is a pissbucket
with a bunch of paychecks in it
The rain makes the dirt erupt
in tiny punctuation
Bends the grass
And Gram keeps
saying her one sentence over
and over again
All Set to Beat The Last Trump
I like to think of her sick
Wrapped in a robe of menthol
Unknotting a lake fish
like a fat comma
Telling me
You could drown
in the gulf between
what is and what wasn’t
She kept separate
bedrooms from Gramp
for the last forty
She danced with the axe
over the cordwood
Muttering Your parents
don’t know what they should
be forgiven for
Bless them
Remember they’re going
to be dead longer than you
I tell her about Jay
The way he’s only gentle
around her sister
Why Dad seems to have left
the best part of him
in that field
with his good right hand
Why Mom seems
to worship
men who tell you
how to get over
on the world
Those people who put
their backs to the fire
and looked
out into the sands
Where God was
brooding with his vendettas
Manufacturing willful daughters
and weakened men
Simeon Berry won the 2013 National Poetry Series for his first collection of poetry, Ampersand Revisited (Fence Books), and the 2014 National Poetry Series for his second book of poetry, Monograph (University of Georgia Press). He has been an Associate Editor for Ploughshares and won a Massachusetts Cultural Council Individual Artist Grant. He lives in Somerville, Massachusetts.
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