by: Aaron Simon
These poems by Aaron Simon guide us through landscapes as variegated as Petra and New Jersey with gnomic lines that explode in the mind, forcing us to confront what we think we know about the world and our place in it: “Knowledge no less/ polished and dripping/ tunnel through the earth/ then pours it on thick.”
BIG SKY
June 16, 2016
The sun’s got it covered
duomo and tea
an apposite taste
for the riches of morning
A renaissance of eyes
rain or shine
a mind like that
radical modesty
AREA CODE
For Alan Bernheimer
The Passaic mosaic
speaks for itself
buried in couch grass
a matter of time
Knowledge no less
polished and dripping
tunnels through earth
then pours it on thick
Yet another Chinatown
mistaken for memory
adrift on the jet stream
Retrace your steps
Do you know Asherah
life partner of God
or that the fly
on your lens has a name?
It’s New Jersey.
PETRA
What I call dusk could be first cause
or an altar of smoke cut
from the horizon.
Inside every rock, a swollen oracle—
over each bluff, a bedouin haze.
All cliffs bear the thread, not yet
drawn, like curtains
or the map’s impossible folds.
Does the mountain goat dream?
Does he think this is home?
We move together with the counterpoint of wind.
SYMBOL AT REST
The muezzin’s cries
at peak glissando
long form dreaming
for rooftop ears
You can’t move through
a symbol at rest
locked in the light well’s
subliminal heat
This, what stony sleep
brings to the table
more or less an atonement
Go on
Aaron Simon is the author of five collections of poetry, including Senses Himself, (Green Zone Editions, 2014), Rain Check Poems (BlazeVOX [books], 2015), and the forthcoming On My Way (Breather Editions, 2017). His recent poems have appeared in Harriet the Blog, NoWhere, and The Delineator. He lives in San Francisco, CA, and works in the financial services industry.
Amazing poems!!!