SIMS, KD
I Cut My Nails For You

“I Cut My Nails For You, again, proves that women invented poetry. KD Sims’ debut collection smears Persephonic perversity with buoyant, babyish puppy play, settling like honey at the bottom of the teacup. Her poems drip Call Me By Your Name levels of nectar, but her directives are dry as the family bone I keep in a jar. If you’ve ever wondered what Schiele’s painted women might be whispering to each other, this book is for you. Sims is a triple sexed Edna St. Vincent Millay, the cool Carrara marble of Patricia Cronin’s Memorial to a Marriage. She writes tight words for loose girls. Let yourself be gayly pollinated. Get your mind topped by the velveteen. Cut your nails and use this book to masturbate. Hell, enjoy something! KD Sims sure is.”
—L Scully

“KD Sims’ poems move from the mouth downward, through strata and sea, toward an accumulation of depth, not climax. The mouth is dominant and unstable, where language exposes the vulnerability of naming, a theology re-rooted in a desire that organises power, gender, and animal life. Thinking occurs with the teeth and nails, committed to remaining in the abyss long enough to be eaten by it (as ‘The apple [itself], never Eve’).”
—Erin Honeycutt

Published by Discount Guillotine, 2026
Poetry