Mary Simmons
Yes. Yes. What else is there to say? There are no wolves in the forest. We killed them all and let our children beg. Meat in the sun, sweet enough. Basketfuls of hungry, hungry flies. Every face in every tree twisted open-mouthed. Coughed out robin feathers and blood-membraned spit. Snapped their branches clean off. There are no trees in the forest. At night, our ears bleed out the echo of saws. Fill our tooth-gaps with sawdust. Pour a little more wine. The fabric scratches at the back of our necks, and we dig the shallowest graves. So short. Barely any dirt at all. All skin, all fabric, we as the construct of us. The path tastes more like salt than like mud. We press our lips to boot prints as though to forgive. Yes. There is no snow in the forest. The streams dried up and took our children to the earth. Soft clay, we were softer, thick with smelt and full of teeth. Without care, we tore the bread. We ground the mustard seed. There are no fires in the forest. There is no forest.
Mary Simmons is a queer poet from Cleveland, Ohio. She is the author of Mother, Daughter, Augur (June Road Press). She earned her MFA from Bowling Green State University, where she also served as the managing editor for Mid-American Review. Her work has appeared in The Baltimore Review, ONE ART, trampset, Moon City Review, Variant Lit, The Shore, and elsewhere. She lives with her cat, Suki, at the edge of the woods.