Sandra Simonds is the author of Warsaw Bikini (Bloof Books, 2008), which was a finalist for the National Poetry Series. Her poems have been published in several journals including Poetry, The Believer, The Colorado Review, Fence, The Columbia Poetry Review, Barrow Street, New Orleans Review, Court Green, and Lana Turner: A Journal of Poetry and Opinion. She earned a PhD in Literature from Florida State University and lives in Tallahassee, Florida.

Mother Was a Tragic Girl
by Sandra Simonds

"What does it mean to be a used white wife, a mother, a tragic girl writing poems? Sandra Simonds gets into these messy words and then tears them apart. Sometimes with the words of others. And sometimes with poems made from scratch. They aren't all bad, these words. But they aren't all good either. And that is where Mother Was a Tragic Girl gets its power. You will at moments be laughing but then you will also at moments just as much be crying. If Antigone was alive and decided to write some poems about the nuclear family, she would write them like Sandra Simonds. These are tough" — Juliana Spahr

When I look out the window of my Winnebago I want to see a Sandra Simonds poem on the billboard before I crash. Bless her cranky pornboots. — Cathy Wagner