Choose Your Own Adventure and Other Poems

Choose Your Own Adventure and other poems invites you to take a journey through the many dimensions of womanhood as you explore-- along with a few animal friends-- ancient rituals of partnership, parenting, love, and separation. In the title piece, a long form poem written in the style of a Choose Your Own Adventure novel, the protagonist is a single American female on a vacation cruise in the Galápagos Islands. In each chapter, she tries on the mating rituals of a different animal as she looks for the "perfect partnership pattern." Accompanied by Simpson's original watercolor illustrations, this poem first appeared in Rattle's Summer 2018 issue. The collection culminates with five shorter poems. In "The Scent of a Man," nominated for a Pushcart Prize by Third Wednesday, the speaker goes out for a night of dancing tango and one-by-one, acquires the smells of each man she dances with while simultaneously losing her own scents. This collection will have you laughing out loud and pondering your own animalistic journey on this earth, only to discover that we all still have some evolving left to do.