Monday, 13 December 2010

Let's Save the Planet

by Sandra Simonds



Just as diamond is not real cubic zirconium
                                 this poem is not really
                        THE END OF TIME
         nor the diamond mouth that I check
                      nightly against African-mined cell phone
                             chip minerals to say “I balance you,”
                                   a phrase that opens, originates, accounts
                        in rotting meat poodle skirts
                             that resist police officer radar guns
                                                in timed successes
                        and dress in meaningful meat poodle skirt disguises, 
                                                (for the leash, sew on 14 pieces
                                                                        of sequins)
                                                because the more I say it, the more
                                                       likely it will be this poem is a really
                                                   cool African mined Leonardo Dicaprio,
                                                                        (cut dog from off- white
                                                                                    piece of felt)
                                                                         (everyone has seen
                               the hypothetical asteroid hit the hypothetical earth
                                        on YouTube), the orgasm’s crux—                       
                                 a ripped up high jinks, the creamy
                                                   particles of the American housing
                                    market unearthed and then spurting
                                                            on fancy clutches of hair
                                              that grow from dead creamed skulls,
                              that sing cantos from dead diamond
                                      mouths and  radiate the new spirit,
                                                 in onion sprouts
                                     from their metacarpals cracking
                                              in the outpost’s burial ground.
                       

                                                And just as the organic little girl walks across
                                                            a field camp, finds green shoots,
                                                            pulls them up for her mama’s soup,
                                                                         our carbon
                                                                         is tilted
                                                                        and nursed in flag
                                                            formations to make diamond
                                                                        flame. Carbon so
                                                            cradled and bathed
                                       how the baby carbon says gaga mama
                                            with its rattle and bonked bones,
                                                      miniature fingers and miniature head—
                                                            the way we pinpoint carbon,
                                             pressure it into gross abandon,
                                                                into adopting a stance
                                                    of meat poodle skirts, the way we force
                                                        carbon to collapse in on itself
                                             like women cut out of Sweden,
                                                like Viking ship women back to the asteroid,
                                                    whose fingers knit
                                        carbon hills and carbon keeps rolling along
                                          the fault lines, in galactic hissy fits, and then the hills
                                                                call their lovers on cell phones
                                                           and the digits keep rolling.


Author Bio: Sandra Simonds grew up in Los Angeles, California. She earned a B.A. in Psychology and Creative Writing at U.C.L.A and an M.F.A. from the University of Montana, where she received a poetry fellowship. In 2010, she earned a PhD in Literature with an emphasis in Creative Writing from Florida State University. She is currently finishing a second full-length collection of poems called Mother was a Tragic Girl which will be published by Cleveland State University Poetry Center in 2012. She is the author of Warsaw Bikini (Bloof Books, 2008), which was a finalist for numerous prizes including the National Poetry Series; she is also the author of several chapbooks including Used White Wife (Grey Book Press, 2009) and The Humble Travelogues of Mr. Ian Worthington, Written from Land & Sea (Cy Gist, 2006). Her poems have been published in many journals such as Poetry,The Believer, the Colorado Review, Fence, the Columbia Poetry Review,Barrow StreetVolt, the New Orleans Review and Lana Turner. Her Creative Nonfiction has been published in Post Road and other literary journals. She currently lives in Tallahassee, Florida and is an Assistant Professor of English at Thomas University in beautiful, rural Southern Georgia.

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