Simone Muench & Jackie K. White
Joyce Mansour assemblage
Asleep like mud in enclosed gardens
earth glitters with December’s
phantom collar as the spotted jaguar
leaves frost prints on your thin shadow.
A winged sun stifles the already forgotten
voices of the volcano. I have moved
beyond the crochet hook
into the mesh of English lawns,
fruitless cemetery perfume
of musk flowers under my tongue. I don’t
want to live in the shadow of your face
like a widow’s last foxglove. I want
to shine in the darkness like white jellyfish,
moonstone, embryos coated
in wax. Body to body in the mud,
horn of mist in the thorax, upsetting the walls,
my mouth runs along the horizon. Why
should I wait in front of a closed door.
Simone Muench is a recipient of an NEA fellowship and the author of seven full-length books, including Lampblack & Ash (Sarabande; winner of the Kathryn A. Morton Prize), Wolf Centos (Sarabande), and The Under Hum, co-written with Jackie K. White (Black Lawrence Press, 2024). Her collaborations with Jackie have appeared in APR, Massachusetts Review, Bennington Review, Missouri Review, Ecotone, Shenandoah, Hopkins Review, and others.
Jackie K. White, Professor Emerita at Lewis University, is the author of three chapbooks: Bestiary Charming (Anabiosis Press Award, 2006), Petal Tearing & Variations (Finishing Line 2008), and Come Clearing (Dancing Girl Press, 2012). Her poems and translations have appeared in ACM, Bayou, Fifth Wednesday, Folio, Quarter after Eight, Spoon River, Third Coast, and Tupelo Quarterly, among others. A collaborative chapbook of poems, written with Simone Muench, Hex & Howl (2021), and their full-length collection, The Under Hum (2024) were published by Black Lawrence Press.