Editor's note: these poems originally appeared in the old/previous Luna Luna
Now I see them sitting me before a mirror
Now I see them sitting me before a mirror.
Whispers. A sound like grinding. Candles. Soap.
Black lines on the skin over my heart. Someone’s
god in the air above my head. A cup
next to an ax. The night’s bridal chamber
shuts me in. Seizure of wind. An entropy
within these walls. I cast spells on the copy
of myself— marionette for a stranger
stage, string and retraction of string. Spotlight
and trapdoor. Hooks and rope. Pain is a mask
we all wear; regret a gun we’ve all shot.
Collared in loneliness, an odalisque
on display. They douse me in rosewater,
burn my writings, doll me up for slaughter.
You thought I was the kind of animal
You thought I was the kind of animal
who would first purr, splay my belly before
I bite. I am not feline or femme fatale,
despite your desire for me to be your
feral other. But, this is no cartoon.
You’re not in some fairy tale. You’re in line
seven, and my claws are sharp. Here, feel. Soon,
it will be time to eat, and you look divine.
Succumb to my wolf face, your own savage
sweet tooth. Lick my fur until there’s nothing
but flesh, no more facade, no camouflage,
only revelation—the heart’s reddest
rifle. Let’s be honest: you love hiding
but I love hunting. Let’s see who’s the best.
She will not ask of aliens, but of friends
She will not ask of aliens, but of friends
to prove that she is not alone. How often
have we all begged the sidereal to bend
to our will? All we want is to begin.
To follow the red fox into the forest,
into the dizzy faultless wilderness
where animals welcome us as their guest
and the stars become our only dress.
We wear what the dead discard, if not this
day then the next. Time is the one garment
we never grow out of. If the abyss
is feral company, then what of ascent?
Can we yoke our flesh to celestial splendor
and still save our beautiful bestial nature?
Are you having a good time?
Are you having a good time? Are you
traveling toward your own disappearance?
Your absence is a ritual dance
of damage I can’t seem to undo
or unfix or unplay or unspin. Are
you still on the on? Are you still? If you
make a mark on a circle, it’s no longer
a circle but a broken line. Are you
a theory of silence, or just quietness?
You are past tense and I am past shadow.
In the winter air’s marrow, we undress—
bodies flashing like frost in the window.
Are you mint and clover? Are you savage sea?
Are you wrist and vein? Blade? Are you ready?
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Simone Muench is the author of five books, including Lampblack & Ash(Sarabande, 2005), Orange Crush (Sarabande, 2010), and Wolf Centos (Sarabande, 2014). Her chapbook Trace received the Black River Award (Black Lawrence Press, 2014). Some of her honors include an NEA fellowship, Illinois Arts Council fellowships, Marianne Moore Prize for Poetry, Kathryn A. Morton Prize for Poetry, PSA’s Bright Lights/Big Verse Contest, and residency fellowships to Yaddo, Artsmith, and VSC. She received her Ph.D from UIC, and is Professor of English at Lewis University where she serves as chief faculty advisor for Jet Fuel Review. Collaborative sonnets, written with Dean Rader are forthcoming inThe American Poetry Review, New American Writing, Zyzzyva, Blackbird, POOLand others.
Dean Rader’s debut collection of poems, Works & Days, won the 2010 T. S. Eliot Poetry Prize. His most recent book, Landscape Portrait Figure Form, was named by the Barnes & Noble Review as one of the best poetry books of the year. Recent poems appear or will appear in Best American Poetry, Kenyon Review, Southern Review, Boston Review, and Zyzzyva, which ran a folio of his poems in their fall 2013 issue. 99 Poems for the 99 Percent: An Anthology of Poetry, which Rader edited, appeared in July and is currently #1 on the SPD Poetry Bestseller List. He is a Professor of English at the University of San Francisco.