Andrew Abbott, whale
SUZANNE SIMMONS
INSIDE
You think you enter
A house but the house
Enters you.
You think you sleep.
You think you dream.
You think you clean the closets.
You think the porch needs paint.
The house hovers around you.
You dream that you’ve dreamt
Of a house.
The house has its own intentions.
The house has a breaking heart.
The house has skipped its meds.
The house is hurting so hard it laughs.
You enter the house, but.
The house is angry.
The house locks you in.
The house shuts all of its shades.
You know you will die, but
you live in the house.
IN AUGUST
I found the boy at the bottom of the lake.
He was wearing yellow shorts.
The ducks' feet swayed like poppies above us.
He took my hand.
We walked through stones circled in silt.
I tried to climb the water but the boy cried out.
Ran my hand through tendrils
swaying and thick. Weightless hand,
weightless head. The lake screams when
it freezes, but a child doesn't know this.
Or, that thawing is worse. The thickened thins,
cracks, pulls apart. Clouds of ice drowning,
then blank sky.
Suzanne Simmons’ poems, essays and photographs have been published in the NYTimes, Fifth Wednesday, Rattle, Smartish Pace, The Baltimore Review and numerous other journals. She lives in Eliot, ME. Suzanne’s website is www.suzannesimmons.net/.
Andrew Abbott (born 1979) resides in Portland Maine. He uses pink duct tape to draw pictures around the town. He can be found easily on Facebook.