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Tim Suermondt is the author of four full-length collections of poems: Trying To Help The Elephant Man Dance (The Backwaters Press, 2007), Just Beautiful (New York Quarterly Books, 2010), Election Night And The Five Satins (Glass Lyre Press, 2016) and The World Doesn’t Know You published by Pinyon Publishing in late 2017. His fifth book, Josephine Baker Swimming Pool, was released by MadHat Press in January 2019. He has poems published in Poetry, The Georgia Review, Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, Blackbird, Bellevue Literary Review, North Dakota Quarterly, december magazine, Plume Poetry Journal, Southern Humanities Review and Stand Magazine (England), among others. He is a book reviewer for Cervena Barva Press and a poetry reviewer for Bellevue Literary Review. He lives in Cambridge with his wife, the poet Pui Ying Wong.

ALL THE TIME

Poets stroll along dirt roads. The road has no end.

–Adam Zagajewski

Tim Suermondt

That’s certainly true for me, but not just the dirt roads—

any roads, all the roads will do. I know they extend

far into the galaxies, every side full of dread and wonder,

crooked arrows I can take a lifetime turning and turning

into and out of, women waving scarves and calling my name

the closer I get, the ultimate end where friends who have died

are waiting, rooting for me to hurry it up, waiting to say

“How can we start the party without you?” There’s poetry

that will break your heart. What better honor could they accord

this wise guy who’s been heading in that direction all the time.

— Tim Suermondt

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