Poet R. B. Simon’s “Shorn” is a concise self-reflective piece, in which the narrator desires to be unburdened and liberated of decades’ worth of burdens. “Shorn” was previously published by Floresta Magazine in 2021. “My work typically centers around issues of identity, spirituality, and transformation, those moments and memories that make us who we are intersectionally and in totality,” R. B. Simon told The Dewdrop. “I often rely on organic and uncultivated landscapes to illustrate those ideas and our place in the natural order and world.”
Shorn This infinite memory multiplies by decades, clings like debris on sheep too long unshorn, suffocating, snagged along mountain paths on their trudge towards certitude. I beg to be razed, stripped to a tabula rasa, relieved of my duty to witness. Let me be a babe, skin goose-fleshed in new air, achingly cold, beautifully unchained.
R. B. Simon
R.B. Simon is a queer writer of African, Native- and European-American descent. She has been writing poetry since teenage angst first hit at age eleven, but sincerely hopes it has improved with age. In her “free time” she enjoys reading, painting, gardening, baking, and other muggle-ish activities. Her more peculiar passions include clothing with stripes, giraffes, and coffee-flavored caffeine. She has been published in multiple journals, among them the Terra Preta Review, The Green Light Literary Journal, Blue Literary Journal, Electric Moon, Cutleaf Journal, and Literary Mama, and she has upcoming work appearing in Sky Island Journal, Minnow Literary Magazine, Strange Horizons, and the Hyacinth Review. Her poem “Clutter” was shortlisted for the 2022 Julia Darling Memorial Poetry Prize. Her chapbook, The Good Truth, released in July 2021 from Finishing Line Press. She is currently living in Madison, WI with her spouse, young adult daughter, and four unruly little dogs.