Juried Reading: Simone Muench

9th Annual Juried Reading First Place

Simone Muench
Simone's poems have a confidence and sophistication of what I like to call intentionality. Also wit, grace, poise and a relationship to writing beyond self-referential feeling. The language is refreshing, musical, attenuated. The literary, cultural references wake us up. This seems a writer inspired by other By Your Mouth is dark, mysterious, surreal in its evocation of all the images conjured by the intimate body of (the death of, the funeral of) other and self. Expansive analogies: "your sadness is ferocious, taller/than Kilimanjaro,î ìYou live in my ribs,/a ruby boutonniere.î There is an evocative marriage taking place here. Her poems display a highly engaged imagination. -- Anne Waldman

Simone Muench's chapbook Notebook.Knife. Mentholatum will be released by New Michigan Press in the Fall. She has poems forthcoming in Notre Dame Review and Indiana Review's 25th Anniversary Issue. She currently teaches poetry at UIC where she is studying for her Ph.D.

By Your Mouth

At night I sleep with the saddest men

but today I ache, moths and blood
decorating my bed, a conjuring

trick I shrink
my spine into. My wrists

raw wool and black
as malpractice from your bite.

Today, not even a meteor swarm
can alarm me.

My hands bare the bad lands,
molded riot of Texas

purple spike. Debut of the mad
muse--how like spies it is disguised.
Outdoors, the wars roar on and
the dead are gathered

like promissory notes and buried
in their grandmothers' mink coats.

*

You salute with a broken tooth, words
tapering off, vapor lifting out your eyes,
no longer knowing the difference between
photographs and mirrors. Shadows border
lips, the severe sheerness of your existence.
Call in the maintenance staff for your removal.
You're a groove in my lineage, a greasy spoon
where I consumed eggs overeasy. The sun's
just a rerun. I'd come to your funeral
if I were in a better mood, but my head jerks
with a thousand whipsnakes. When you died,
I swooned like a flamenco dancer on Acapulco
gold while honey guides and vinegar flies gathered
near your stain, small as bird shadow, on the snow.

*

Days when I gaze into your glass
eye, archeological remains
of your tortured back, mustangs
gather at your open mouth.
You conspire against my pleasure,
your sadness is ferocious, taller

than Kilimanjaro. You live in my ribs,
a ruby boutonniere; you are plum

and pendulum; a car salesman in white
tie and tails. You're bizarre as innards,

buzzards as you stumble dream
to dream you reside in margins,

in the blurry vision of virgins;
in my eyes, you are aniline dye,

the deep south of your contagious mouth.

-- Simone Muench