Catherine Simpson

Catherine Simpson is a cellist who lives in Santa Barbara. She has been previously published in the Big River Poetry Review, Right Hand Pointing, Spectrum, Step Away Magazine, and Into the Teeth of the Wind.

Swing

He came up to me while I was on a

Swing, at night, a dark-eyed young man

Smoking a cigarette. He, “I thought

I’d talk to the girl on the swing.”

His hair was as neat as a boy scout’s.

He told me about his girlfriend, his

Ex-girlfriend. I pointed my feet between

Constellations. I said, “I don’t have any

Love problems. I’ve never been in love.

Nobody’s ever told me that they

Were in love with me.” He said,

“I’m in love with you. It’s easy to say that

When you don’t know the person, but I’m

In love with you.” I said, “Well, I’m a virgin.

I’ve never even been kissed.” He said,

“I figured. You’re on a swing. How fucking

Victorian can you get?”

Kenwood, CA

In the fall the row of grapevines

Are lit red with changing leaves, their

Hand-shape turning in on itself

With that autumnal collapse, and the

Shoulders of vines are yoked with grapes

And grapes, staining the air with a

Sweet tannin at night, when the sea-fog

Wends its way through the mountains.

The smell of salt and grapes and the

Burn of September grass-fires that

Redden the moon is so pungent that

It makes it hard not to take walks at

Night—that, and the clamor of

Grasshoppers rubbing their half-note

Songs of mate me, mate me.

Santa Barbara

A man without his shirt

Wafts down the street on his

Yellow cruiser—his belly

Distended, skin reddened, white

Fluff of chest-hair spreading down his

Navel, across his shoulders—

That is Santa Barbara, I thought,

A middle-aged man on a cruiser on

A Friday afternoon, the

Fat tires of his bike

Crushing peels from nearby orange

Trees into the pavement.