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THOMAS E. SIMMONS - POEMS

11/27/2020

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Picture
Thomas E. Simmons is a husband, a father, a lawyer, a professor, and a lifelong South Dakotan – in that order.

​Since

​in truth people are
not cylinders
nor the other
way ‘round
 
we ought not
to pretend it
 
our veins are blue;
full of blood –
our veins don’t take in
even scant
fuel tanks
 
& it’s scandalous
for the polyps
to suggest it
 
Electricity doesn’t: animate limbs
Frankenstein’s creation: was monstrous
& didn’t require
a bride to wed it
 
Beautiful skin is
not like porcelain – 
nor like alabaster –
it’s like skin
 
it’s meant
to be
like skin
 
 

​Geography Lesson

​Let’s join this field trip to Kosmodrom Baykonur
A launch center in southern Kazakhstan’s
desert steppe where the winds can comfort
or distress depending on their pathways
 
Perhaps the name Kosmodrom Baykonur
was selected to deceive the Western Bloc by
telegraphing its location 320 kilometers northeast
(to a mining town of that name) of its true location
 
but the cresentoid-shaped spaceport
near Leninsk isn’t lost. It’s east of the
Aral Sea, north of the Syr Darya River
 
surrounded by plains which please
the radio signals and their démodé
preferences for uninterrupted spaces
 
near the equator which endows greater
velocity into the ICBMs to-be-launched
from the waist of the spinning-earth where
 
Afanasiy Ilich Tobonov found paths of
mass wildlife deaths exactly drawn on
the flight paths of wind-borne rockets
 
Deer had been incinerated and the
people of Eliptyan became cancerous
from the rocket fuel. So did Tobonov.
 
Those deaths and their causes:
another series of lost things –
 
but the spilled rocket fuel wasn’t lost;
it blew its way into arteries and bones
 
And as our field trip scuttles back to school
we’ll pass fields of spent launch equipment
which the local population salvages
 
thereby spilling
rocket fuel where it
doesn’t belong

 

​Kosmos-21

​She whom Americans call ‘Cosmos 21’ ascended heavenward from
Kosmodrom Baykonur on (the American’s) Veteran’s Day in 1961
 
and while the name Космодро́м Байкону́р may have been selected for
deception purposes Kosmos 21 wasn’t concerned with secrecy. She was
 
concerned with staying aloft as she careened around Earth gathering
momentum, but her orbit decayed slightly, then more noticeably. Three
 
days later she flatlined. We’re not even sure whether she was meant to attempt
a Venus flyby or not. She’d been as shrouded in Soviet secrecy as her launch
 
site and by now perhaps they’ve forgotten her altogether. Maybe she was
intended from the beginning to remain in a geocentric orbit – a ‘parking
 
orbit’ – which makes it sound pedestrian – but a polished metal handiwork
carried by her own velocity and spinning through space tethered only by the
 
gravity of us (the mass of us) is far from pedestrian – a tether ready to snap
She stalled, lessening, then punctured the atmosphere, and came back hot

​Slim Buttes Sonnet (1876)

​We, when Crazy Horse had vanished away
  chased him. September. Then came stagnation 
  which clenched us and held. Until – starvation
  “Men eating their mules,” newspapers portrayed
 
Entered crooked buttes after the sun’s banked
  Viewed campfires which glowed against shallow clouds
  “Let’s crawl towards the tipis, wrapped up in shrouds
  Squint, mutter softly, count warriors encamped”
 
Mills, hours later (night greyed towards a dawning)
  Split our men into fourths; stealth was required 
  to best hidden foes encircled by spires
 
Village of families, doors facing east
  Closed, snug, dreaming, awoke to sulfur thick
  American Horse shot in the stomach

​Estate Planning

​ 
Her property emulsified
behind her very eyes with
the realization that
her wiccan spell royalties
might be
trickier to devise
than she’d
originally
anticipated
 
Non-probate avenues to consider;
Angles to take stock of;
The right wording of the thing
 
Should the gift be conditioned –
Will the devisee accept it some
time after the donor is
cremated –
Ought she to die intestate –
 
Will other expectancies be
roiled / calamitous
soiled / cantankerous? 
 
What of lapse; of loved
ones who refused to die
in the correct sequence?
 
How about abatement; of
creditors consuming legacies
as if they were candy corn?
 
problematic-postmortem-presents, these
 
The ink on the testatrix’s papers ‘twas
still wet when she realized her mistake
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