The Temz Review
  • Home
  • About Us
  • Issues
  • Journal Subs
  • 845 Press
    • Catalogue

Poem with Death as Subject

and Interlocutor

By Seth Simons
After Steve Scafidi
A harp. A mandolin. The black ivory
   keys of a clavichord Chopin
      discarded. Horse shit
 
simmering in the street in Vienna.
   Two boys carting it away,
      the way the grey
 
playthings of their bones browned
   and the ground recognized
      itself today. In a dim
 
house in Harrisburg last week my mother
   found a letter her father wrote
      young and in love with all
 
the wrong things and Venetian cannoli
   he said is not nearly as sweet
      as my grandmother’s
 
pussy and the sugar and the spray
   of bullets and the flashbang
      birdsong of cities blessed
 
by fire with fire and fire he said
   is what lasts of us when
      You’ve left—oh— 
       
Angel of Smoke and of Death,
   Killer of Chopin and What
      Comes Next. Tell me
 
something I don’t know. Tell me
   the secret to joy or a joke
      you heard in the silk
 
bellows of the pipe organ I imagine
   Hell must be, some words full
      of bluster and silly
       
like music is silly or prayer or the busy
   convolutions of poetry I think
      too much of and lovely
 
enough to offer some fig leaf of peace
   to the bones clicking like padlocks
      or locusts beneath us rising
 
up in warships to take it all back—  

   this city, that frozen port, this
      blasted heath, these eighty
 
years of happiness and emptiness
   and the silliness of my father’s
      laugh and my mother’s
 
laugh and the jokes I told at a bar
   last night where strangers
     laughed maybe
 
at the stupid way my hand shakes
   as I hold the mic to the lips of
      the mouth on the face my
 
grandfather gave me, you bastard, tell me
   this was all for love and if it was
      what that means.


Poem for Upright Citizens

By Seth Simons
Congratulations to the prince on his engagement!
Today I made sixty dollars writing my sentences
for the Internet. They weren’t exceptional
but they did the trick. It came time to refill
the hummingbird feeder. My darlings
have simple tastes: four parts water one
part sugar. I read of a shark biologists
believe to be five hundred years old. Great
job shark! Your wisdom I’d wager is immense
and inapplicable. Five hundred years ago
Martin Luther wrote what must be
the most theses ever penned in one go.
Then came the typical mayhem rubbling 
nations in its wake. Martin you dog!
Comedians are yelling at me online.
They despise me for complex laughable
reasons I don’t have time to explain.
I text my friend Sarah Sarah everything
I love is the stupidest it is so stupid
only I understand also you also hundreds
perhaps thousands happily paying
no attention eating forkfuls of pasta
gazing out over the Riviera. Seth
calm down Sarah says. I’m calm I say.

Seth Simons is a writer and editor based in the Bay Area, where he works as a journalist covering the entertainment industry. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Rattle, Fugue, Breakwater Review, Conduit, Rivet, and the McNeese Review.
Send inquiries to thetemzreview[at]gmail[dot]com
© COPYRIGHT 2021. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
  • Home
  • About Us
  • Issues
  • Journal Subs
  • 845 Press
    • Catalogue