Two Poems
Lysette Simmons

Gilda

Disaster to the wench that did wrong by Johnny! Find her for me amidst the glitter and hate.

The Empty know better.

The lucky ones are terrible at cards. What I need most is silence, yet you speak. I think of being tobacco -- generally pleasurable, generally deadly and ageless. I like the life that likes the exact situation it's causing with you.

I lead a life that likes the fact that I lead it.

You, the convenient stick that sickens me, the glass palm trees ring with hate. A clip can be replaced, but a gun will always be there. What is the great philosopher doing in the washroom, a bull in one arm, and a jester in the other?

You have a strange language, little one, filled with superstition and fringe. You must have come from a strange city. Speaking little of friends, funny (how the ocean saved him). She didn't know then that what she heard was the door closing on her own cage.

A girl, like the ocean, can stand not knowing the why of things.


Resolution

I'm bent double, throwing
up into a box
I made myself. Into the words
we go.

Where will they take us?
Nobody
knows. No, I don't look
all right,

But I want to look like
I want
to. Staurophobia:
fear of crucifixes.

Fear of being
sealed in a box: Pygmachophobia.
Apeirophobia:
Fear

of the infinite. Up the airy
mountain,
down the rushy glen, we daren't
go a-

Hunting for fear of little
men. Must
I speak to you with my mouth
full of crux?

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