(or notes on the life and letters)
by Sandra Simonds (16 pp. Saddle-Stitched, B&W photographs) $7 ppd.
“These travelogues record realms and entities sprung, spit, spattered, spun from the off-kilter pottery wheel of the author’s subconscious in fully-fledged bursts — organic forms! — of visionary lyricism. Before the reader’s eyes -- and most importantly the ears — a kaleidoscopic dream world is enacted in real-time complete with “velvety mammoths,” a four day stay in a lighthouse, a maze, Mary Magdalene, dolphins, bear cubs balancing eggs on their noses, glass pineapples, and much more. Simonds crafts a world whose phantasmagoria folds over the reader like a strobe-light on Jesus Juice. She is the reincarnation of Artaud, Mina Loy, and Gilda Radner. The Humble Travelogues of Mr. Ian Worthington is a wild stroke of poetic power, and cooler than the Crocodile Hunter (RIP)!”
— Joseph Massey
“To traverse a barreness, this plane, tracking series of condemned, black with melancholy, all hunched and shuffling toward their end. Who knows how figures get made, but imprinted and upright, they fall in line. It’s the fate of flesh: even spirit, even the lightest wit, assumes space. They say reading happens in time, but Sandra Simonds doesn’t believe it. Her travelogues are white meanderings, inklings of worlds to come, a tiny island. This voyage of bare facts, that everything is, that wonders appear, that earth abides, quiets geography. Unpretending itinerary, all she knows is that we don’t is this.”
Prose Poem Written at the OK Corral
by Sandra Simonds
by Sandra Simonds
I went to visit the amputee. He lived in a teepee made of stained glass. Precious stones lined the pathway leading up to his teepee. There were gardens in the area mostly gardens of light green moss. There was a forest of glass pineapples. I want to ask him many questions like do you take vitamins and if you do, what sort of vitamins do you take. I also want to ask him if he ever experiences the phantom limb phenomenon. When he says yes, I have a phantom limb I ask him: does it feel pain? or does it tickle the rest of your body. He said he lost his limb in the great war of 44444444444. According to the Kabbalah this was a ìno nonsenseî war. A war among wars.
When the great war of 4445454545454523243 ended many people were walking around the continent looking for their limbs. Prosthetics were invented only much earlier so he was fortunate enough not to bear the shame of a false-limb. The sham of it. He says I am an elitist and if I have lost a limb then I shall not hide from a night of googly eye stars. I lack nothing. I have all of my limbs.
He showed me his pet goat. He said the goat likes to drink saline solution and the goat chews black bubble gum. I was getting annoyed with myself. Would I ever be able to really understand the amputee in the teepee? Strange days. Strange days, friend. The moon is that dried clot of blood on a dried flower in my left pocket. Does the limb ooze cloud? I took out my ATM card because the teepee had a snack bar and I was getting hungry. Limb, llama, buccaneer, despair. a Ghastly fear!
The amputee would ask me to play a game of pick-up sticks. Notice that his left leg is missing and he wants to play only if a towel is tied around the missing limb. It's okay. I will tie the towel to the missing limb. He says please go outside the fort and pick us a few glass pears so that we can dine tonight and play our games in peace with full stomachs and I will put on some Schubert for the goat. It's the uselessness of milk, I tell you. The red breasts thrown out to Chernobyl sized skin cancer mutts.
In the months that followed the amputee disclosed the much needed information and though he had a violet temper I got all of the facts Jack. He moved into a dormitory-style ìold folksî home and he killed his pet goat in a sacrificial ritual that could only be understood in terms of biblical prophecy. I was moved to a different case. Oh my caseload is heavy! Peking duck, marbles, Joan of Arc.
