Poems by Danny Earl Simmons

Nay Nay

2012-05-15T07:23:00.001-07:00

He was the sun to me. He was the sun
to us all. Each time our come-and-go Dad
came, we basked in his hereness, shrugging off
past abandonments, too young to arrive
at harsher conclusions, conclusions Mom
would reach then renege—something in his smile.

My big sister, Lyne’, had that same smile,
teeth slightly bucked, a tad gapped, still the sun
bounced off them like summertime. But not Mom’s
smile – gravity drew hard on it. Each time Dad
dashed it grew flat and stingy and arrived
on my heart inverted, always just off.

One warm afternoon as Nay Nay hopped off
the school bus, Dad and I met her surprised smile.
They hugged and twirled round and round. We arrived
home; he lit a cigarette – red as the sun
setting over Saddleback Mountain. Dad
blew smoke rings and we all laughed, even Mom.

I remember the first time I saw Mom
cry. There was this slam; I startled, threw off
the covers, and shot up. Nay Nay said, Dad
just left again. I almost cried but smiled
instead. Sneaking downstairs, I watched the sun
share gray dawn with Mom just as her sobs arrived.

I cried hard, though, that one time we arrived
at the jail to drop off Dad. He kissed Mom
and gave me and Nay Nay tight hugs; the sun
from behind him made us squint. He took off
his sunglasses, had a smoke, and left smiling –
with swagger. I never stopped missing Dad.

I can’t remember rain when I was with Dad –
only sunshine and shadows, arrivals
and departures, hugs and promises, smiles
and smoke rings, and wishing I was him. Mom
and Nay Nay, though, they remember awful
storms and thunderclaps and months without sun.

Nay Nay used to tell me, You know, Mom really loves Dad.
I knew. I’d watch Mom’s face as Dad arrived – she’d send off
a smile that lingered like smoke rings in the afternoon sun.

Rose & Thorn Journal - Spring 2012

Shades of Gray

2012-05-12T06:08:00.000-07:00

for Alisha

I see fewer shades of gray
these days, have a crisper appreciation
for the black and white of things.

I can see deep inside colors
I never knew existed. I squint
and stare, tilt my head, smile a lot.

The other day I swear I watched
rain fall for the first time.
Each drop holds a rainbow, you know.

Of course you know. You put them there.

Poetry Breakfast - May 12, 2012

Bitter Pills

2012-05-08T12:30:00.001-07:00

Sometimes,
you just gotta
scrape the tip
of your tongue
against the sharp edge
of your bottom teeth,
work up the spit
and swallow hard.

Yes, Poetry - May 2012

Firsthand Knowledge

2012-05-02T05:20:00.000-07:00

I am firsthand knowledge
of the powerless power of prayer.
Don’t tell me the answer was no;
there is no no for the begging
I begged.

I am firsthand knowledge
of don’t you dare teach me a lesson
on my sons. Don’t tell me there is a reason
for your no reason could ever be
reason enough.

I am firsthand knowledge
of holding nothing back. Don’t tell me
I held back, that I did not strap them
to the altar, watch their jugulars pulse,
raise my knife.

You spared Abraham the loss
of his son. Why not me mine?

Punchnel's - May 2, 2012

Careful

2012-04-18T05:42:00.000-07:00

I have to be careful of closing my eyes
and taking deep breaths in the memory

of you leaning against me, resisting
the pull of stares we shared

in the tightest gripping of restraint
between hushed acknowledgments

that everything had just gone wrong
in the imagining of a thousand kisses

that would have been much too soft
to make possible the impossible leaving

of your emerald green pleas and desperate
wanting for the world to spin back to normal.

Full Of Crow Poetry - April 2012

Darren

2012-04-04T05:24:00.000-07:00

Disagreeable yet fun ex-husband
arrives in her mind and displaces
reason. This time, warm cinnamon
rolls spice the air, wisting her
eyes closed as she lingers in
not remembering everything.

Punchnel's - April 4, 2012

Plowing

2012-03-31T06:09:00.000-07:00

Turning black earth against twilight
as muddy legs plod, shoulders ache
and bow before worn leather straps
that sag between his bull and his beliefs.

Bent in the knowing that gray
becomes green and sweat waters
ground into overflowing, he grows
dark patches of glove on his palms.

After supper, his thick hands reach
to caress flour from her cheek,
slide gently along the softness
there, coffee brewing on the stove.

Poetry Breakfast - March 30, 2012

There Was Pink on the Roof

2012-03-28T05:07:00.006-07:00

It was dusky and I could see pink on the neighbor’s rooftop
out the living room window from where I sat at the dinner table.

The boys were watching baseball on TV; I could hear
that the score was close and that the right team was winning.

Normally, I would have been watching the game
with the boys, but that night I was at the dinner table,

it was late, and I could clearly see the fading pink
on the roof of the neighbor’s house.

She was talking when I got up to take a shower.
She was saying something to me.

I finished my shower when all the hot was gone.
The wrong team had come back to win.

The curtains were drawn over the living room window.
I sat at the dining room table; it was late.

I tried to figure out when it was
that I’d shrugged my shoulders for good.

April 2012 Goodreads Monthly Newsletter Poetry Contest finalist.
Reprinted on The Houseboat (poetry page)

A big round belly stretched nine-months tight

2012-03-18T09:01:00.000-07:00

with a smudgy brown
longitudinal line
running up the globe of it,
shiny thin spider webs
pulled over and around
its snare drum circumference,
the occasional anaconda slither
just beneath the surface,
the every-now-and-then cartoon sock
from the inside bulging out,
and that odd little button
popping out in the very middle –

this is beauty.

The Smoking Poet - spring 2012

It Was a Giraffe

2012-02-14T14:44:00.002-08:00

Actually, it was a recipe holder.

Ok, it was a stick painted yellow
with brown spots and a glued-on
clothes-pin stuck into a styrofoam
cup filled with plaster of Paris.

It was a Mother’s Day present.

It came from kindergarten
and it was in my hands when I got mad.
(Mom, it’s my turn to sit up front!)

It was unwrapped by my stomping feet.

It is the eyes shut tight
brown-and-yellow-and-powdery-white
taint of every Mother’s Day since.

Boston Literary Magazine - spring 2012

Nursing on a Park Bench

2012-02-14T14:37:00.002-08:00

He squawks for his next drink
like a hunched-over, half-drunk
curmudgeon of a wobbly wino
with a lifetime of sorrows to drown.

She attends like a bawdy barmaid -
busty, casual about modesty –
and serves with an affectionate
familiarity that turns faces red.

I wag my head, smile at passersby,
reach into the bag, unfold the little blue
rocket-ship swaddle, pause, watch
their stare, refold the blanket.

Boston Literary Magazine - spring 2012

Idioglossia

2012-01-20T19:48:00.000-08:00

I said,
Did you hear me?
I said, Did you hear me!
Oh, my God! You are not
going to close off! You never
listen! All you ever do is tune me
out! I can't believe the total disrespect you
show me. Listen, all I was saying is that, in
spite of your macho, negative attitude,
I want us to go to counseling
again.

The Monarch Review - 01/16/2012

Fix Yourself Some Peanut Butter Toast

2012-01-10T15:53:00.001-08:00

After Galway Kinnell

Our bedroom door was locked.
Our radio was turned on loud enough
for the entire family to know
that traffic was light
and there was a 30-percent chance of rain.

The speed of our movements
was insufficient for sweating.

Caresses and kisses
snapped eyes shut
in a passionate focus
on quiet propriety.

The usual words were transformed
into a skin-to-skin telepathy.

In spite of all this,
or, perhaps, because of all this,
there came a knock at the door
and a high-pitched insistence on pancakes.

What followed that knock
was supposed to have been
a muffled come-cry,
but sounded a lot like
"peanut butter toast!"

Pale Horse Review - Winter 2012 (page 8)

Send Away

2011-12-27T10:41:00.000-08:00

I
Her name was Arcadia Bibiana Kitchen
and her red hair came from Appalachia
along with her freckles and thin skin,
while her attitude migrated with her mother
from south of the southernmost border.

When Mama couldn’t hear,
Daddy called her Archie.

II
“Listen to me, mijita.
There are two things
you never tolerate from a man.

One, you never let him hit you
twice. A single bruise
is a forgivable sin – send him
to confession. If he ever makes
a second, you handle his temper
with a machete.

Second, never let him leave you.
Oh, you can send a pendejo away
anytime you want, no problem;
but, a real woman knows how
to keep her amorcito.”

III
He’s heading toward the door!
Think, Archie, think.
Block the doorway.
Do not let him leave.
Stand your ground.
Oh, no. You’d better not
use that fist again, baby.
Stare him down, Archie.
Remind him what he has to lose.
Relax, baby. That’s right.
Let me kiss that mark off your cheek.
Don’ t ever make me send you away.

“I’m so sorry, carinito.”

IV
“Damnit, Archie, stop that crying.
You’re going to scare him off.
We’ve talked about this.
Wipe your eyes.

Raise the gun.
Don’t go giving yourself away.
Steady. Breathe.
Take good aim.
Start to squeeze.
Send away."

Poetry Quarterly - Fall 2011

Adagio

2011-12-15T08:38:00.001-08:00

As the end of her life neared,
dreary persistence disguised
all she had once been, save her
grace, unmistakable
in the elegant extension
of her hand as it reached for his.

The Summerset Review - Winter 2012
Reprinted in The Houseboat (Featured poet No. 3).

Haiku #39

2011-11-27T08:46:00.000-08:00

Fallen apricots
beek beneath his boyish dreams –
reading Twain in tree.

a handful of stones - November 27, 2011

On the Table

2011-11-23T17:32:00.001-08:00

The girl of my dreams
Is a very stark reality -
Stark as in bare,
Bare as in naked,
Naked as in nothing between us,
Everything laid out on the table.

I hope the table can take it.

Other Rooms Press - Fall/Winter 2011
Reprinted in The Houseboat (Featured poet No. 3).

What We Know

2011-11-03T05:39:00.004-07:00

The seventeen years between us,
that we have not let come between us,
mean I am going to die first.

I will abandon you, cheat you
of the groaning laughter in mutual aches,
the wrinkled telepathy
forged through a many-decades tangle
of conflict and conversation.

Whether the years after my death click away
like the tumble of falling dominoes
or crumble with a slow dignity
like the white ruins of ancient grace,
we know you will be left alone.

In the children of our children,
that you will know so much better than I –
if I get to know them at all –
I hope you will see a little of me

in their devotion to soft walks
on cold evenings in the valley,
holding your hand and enjoying the lingering
of their gray breath as it slides into twilight.

If they laugh too easily and too loudly,
let your head wag behind your smirk
as you cradle yourself in their roar –
the way you do now, whenever I bellow
in amused appreciation of this or that little thing.

Take them to Waterloo Park each summer
and help them find flat stones
for skipping across the shallow Santiam.
Splash with them ankle deep the way we did
right before we kissed for the very first time.

Pack them into the car and race the sunset
so they will know what we have come to know –
the sun descends behind Mary’s Peak each night
and, sometimes, sprays red across the sky.

Toe Good Poetry - November 3, 2011
Reprinted in The Houseboat (Featured poet No. 3).

Death by Chrysalis

2011-10-30T07:29:00.002-07:00

Not everything that dies becomes a moldering rot
like the sticky black ooze of the weeds of ancient seas.

Take that wooly mammoth, for instance, found in a block
of ice on the edge of the middle of some frozen nowhere,
flowers half-chewed in its mouth. What luck to be unlucky
in such a way – in a cold flash just after a little dinner-salad –
so that, all these centuries later, heads wag in disbelief
and grunt smirks at the shaggy once was of him.

And what of the death by chrysalis of the caterpillar –
a voracious, needy, earthy thing that dies from cramp
and forced revision only to be resurrected with two thin
surprises connected lightly to the same center of it all?

Pirene's Fountain - Fall/Winter 2011
Reprinted in The Houseboat (Featured poet No. 3).

Haiku #27

2011-10-28T05:25:00.000-07:00

Centenarian
called octogenarian
a whippersnapper.

a handful of stones - October 28, 2011

Blogger Chick

2011-10-01T18:43:00.001-07:00

Her words slide
                 across the page
                                 like a lap dance
                      and grind against
     the very base of you.
She writes
       like a runaway
                without options;
                            uses what God gave
             and what men take.
She digs on the sweat
                        and the panting
                                    and the smoke
                                                and the rush of blood
                                                                       to the head
                                                      from the whiskey
                         she pours down your throat,
         and you open wide.
She knows
        she's an addiction
                            and winks
                                   at the weakness
                                                        of you,
                             reduces you to words
                 you read over
  and over again.

Burning Word - October 2011
Reprinted in The Houseboat (Featured poet No. 3).

Haiku #23

2011-09-18T01:09:00.000-07:00

When the fence blew down,
the neighbor-lady and I
flirted it back up.

a handful of stones - September 18, 2011

Haiku #15

2011-08-30T05:00:00.000-07:00

In only one week
fragrant and full blooms become
brown-fringed and wrinkly.

a handful of stones - August 30, 2011

Mid-Valley Winter

2011-07-20T10:29:00.001-07:00

Scraping windshields in the morning,
watching the frigid Santiam pour
itself into the northbound Willamette,
and worrying about flood stages.

Counting the days between sun breaks
and moments of seeing all things clearly
through freshly scrubbed air –
Cascades glittering in the daylight,
every star known to man at night.

The ground turning white every one of four years,
tow-trucks and drippy snow-men appearing
along with no school - lasting for a day or two,
a week at most, until the familiar gray wash returns,
sweeping away the slush. Children returning to class
with brags of height and speed and very close calls.

Sitting by windows pretending you want the gray to go away
so you can begin to enjoy all of the complaining
about the heat of spring and the swelter of summer.
Reading, thinking you should write a memoir, coffee,
closing your eyes and remembering all of the green.

Poetry Quarterly - Fall 2011
Reprinted in The Houseboat (Featured poet No. 3).

After Work

2011-07-07T20:49:00.000-07:00

I walk into the eager of your arms,
lean heavy upon your bounce,
rest in the calm of your neck,
breathe you all the way in.

I cradle the fair of your face,
search for the tender blue of you,
delight in the delicate nest of you,
rise to the joy and soul of you.

Suspended in the mercy of your smile,
I wrap my hands around the slender of your waist,
reign all of your fullness into all of my fullness,
kiss all of your kisses, taste all of your missing me,

and let things get out of hand.

Poetry Quarterly - Summer 2011