Sandra Simonds

National Whatever Writing Month

I won’t write a novel this month about the gods no matter
              how much they don’t pay me and I’m not going to read
anyone’s poetry book for money since they treat
    me like a mechanic, their verse being
        a bad carburetor I can’t hijack. January. February.
                March. April. May, etc. Star Wars cereal
and diner eggs, cold on the cold counter where the cold waitress
    adds some cold black mascara to her cold checkered doom apron.

    If it could snow in Orlando.
    If the waitress could look out the window and see the snow.
    If she had dreams of snow that materialized as the backdrop to the diner.
    If she was dreaming, the dreams of snow.
    If she could look sadly at the snow and pour your coffee.
    If she was as beautiful as the snow we are looking at, Molly.
    If she could ride time, patterned like snow, Orlando.
    If we could just get a glimpse into her suffering, Orlando, and the snow
    could signify our understanding of her psychology.
    If we could know through the snow.
    If it was cold just for one day.
    For one day ice.
    If she could be like the movies where the snow means something inside the poem where
    it is snowing violently for a moment and then     the snow eases up and she is staring at the
    snow longingly like a dog wearing a silly red ribbon around his neck inside a house
    inside a poem inside a diner inside the poet’s imagination.

      The problem is you’re boring, and you’re mean,
and there’s no in between layers of the cold clouds combine
              to make a story longer and more entwined than the Edda.
Predictable outbursts of rain to denote a lonely summer
      filling all technologically-driven affect with water.
                           It rots the dizzying trees from the bottom up.
                           Then, all the dissolved birds leave.
      Effusive as I am. Forget the story. Just never mind. Nothing.
 

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