(Laura Sims)
Laura Sims is the author of two books of poems: Practice, Restraint, (winner of the 2005 Fence Books Alberta Prize), and Stranger (Fence Books, 2009). She is a co-curator of the Segue Series @ Bowery Poetry Club, a co-editor of Instance Press, and a lecturer at Baruch College. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Four Poems
His face
Shone
At dusk
So odd
Yet
So pleasing
A stone—
Then
His skull
Was inhabited
Lightly
Such colors
Were called
To my tiny
Own
Head
Was at ease.
I was more
Than what
Kept me
Myself
In the dread
Fourth World
A hundred parts of
You
Inside
The Gold Apartment
You
Lock the door
A piece
Of wire in hand
You like
Your habits then
You dream
Of marching
Up the hill
And down
Again and
Fingers pointing
Now
A hundred parts of
You
One
A lily
One
A rose
And so on
Who Malingers
Cannot go on
*
Remembers:
While burning
A topcoat
The taste
Of perpetual
Folly
*
Finally, wakes—
In the arms of
Who claims
To be wholesome
Is
To be criminal
Out of a vacuum & into the world
I.
Into heavenly
Structure – the heart – there
Everything matters
II.
At a feast
Of beautiful feelings
You learn
The other must serve you
III.
And suffer
You suffer
Yourself to observe