Leonora and Remedios Cadaver the Domestic
Simone Muench & Jackie K. White | Poetry
They allegory, they revelation, they knife
their oils over parchments, aluminum,
cigar spit stains. They even embroider,
as expected: eyes on a table, horses on
candlesticks. Long done with harlequins
parading as heroes, they jugular
red wax seals in a parlor of green vials
and morphine, sparking the electricity
of leaves through torsos of leaves. They
spur on motorcades with blue uniforms
glistening like lake-slicked herons.
Behind so many curtains of so much
cerise, they listen, they swill, they turn
statues to bodies and bodies to feathers
sky-swirling like glasses of wine swept
from dinner tables in high-flown hand
gestures. In fossilized phrases no longer
used, they outline, they outlive, they wound.
Simone Muench is the recipient of an NEA Poetry Fellowship; the 2023 Lewis University Career Scholarship Award; a 2023 Illinois Arts Council Fellowship, and the Meier Foundation for the Arts Award. She is the author of seven full-length books including The Under Hum, cowritten with Jackie K. White, (Black Lawrence Press, June 2024). She is the creator of the Hungry Brain Sunday Reading Series that she co-hosts with Kenyatta Rogers. She serves as poetry editor for JackLeg Press, a poetry editor for Tupelo Quarterly, and faculty advisor for Jet Fuel Review. She received her PhD from the University of Illinois at Chicago and directs the writing program at Lewis University where she teaches creative writing and film studies.
Jackie K. White is the author of three chapbooks: Bestiary Charming, Petal Tearing & Variations, and Come Clearing, Dancing Girl Press. Her poems and translations have appeared in ACM, Bayou, Fifth Wednesday, Folio, Quarter after Eight, and Spoon River, 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.