Jonathan Simkins lives in Denver, Colorado. He is the co-translator with Úrsula Starke of Creationism (The Lune, forthcoming 2018) by Vicente Huidobro, and the author of the chapbooks This Is The Crucible (The Lune, 2017), and in collaboration with artist Justin Ankenbauer, Translucent Winds (Helikon Gallery & Studios, 2016). His translations of Ernesto Noboa y Caamaño have appeared in all the sins, Hinchas de Poesía, Peacock Journal, and his translations of Úrsula Starke have appeared or are forthcoming in Coucou Home, Deluge,Guernica, and Menacing Hedge.

Belgian

The bottle in my brain smokes black as sin.
Black nothing pulls me to the gates of null.
Give me my liquid love again, again.

I wake at two am to drown again
My bleach black ribbon of a conquering soul.
The bottle in my brain smokes black as sin.

I’ll shut my mouth. Just pour my fucking gin
And think of what I do to make me whole.
Give me my liquid love again, again.

One day I’ll learn to live outside my skin
If something blacker takes a wetter toll.
The bottle in my brain smokes black as sin.

That growing hole that hides down deep within
Keeps falling further to a blacker hole.
Give me my liquid love again, again.

A purer thought will burn me when a pin
Pulls out the hinges in my drink drowned skull.
The bottle in my brain smokes black as sin.
Give me my liquid love again, again.