Burnt Offerings Smooth shining silver domes cresting yellow winds stained like men’s teeth Round mirrored ones blest by Soviet nuns whistling with them A psalm maskil fancies yellows like refiners’ fire Lay on fullers’ soap Noetic recitations Celibate chants Full of sap Strong as wild oxen Repetitions and soundings Sanctifications: roundings The music of the spheres by domes upon a sphere Carved-in and rooted Solemn there; stay No adversary shouts their names The gale screams at someone else Soft agents of tarnished silver much vouchsafed A people without power who made their home in the rocks Sternums like flint flocks racing Raisin-curtseys grasp prayer Palms waving raising Rest, encrusted, undefiled there
Thomas Simmons is a professor at the University of South Dakota Knudson School of Law and a lifelong South Dakotan. His scholarship focuses on trusts and estates. He teaches courses in estate planning, professional ethics, and the Holocaust. His Tod Browning Loose-Leaf Encyclopedia collection of poems was published by Cyberwit in 2020.
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