Thomas Simmons is a lawyer, a tenured professor at the University of South Dakota School of Law, and a lifelong South Dakotan. His scholarship and teaching focuses on trusts and estates. His poems have been published (or are forthcoming) in Pasque Petals, El Portal, Corvus Review, Nebo, North Dakota Quarterly, Nine Muses, Thirteen Mina Birds, Amethyst Review, and The Showbear Family Circus.