Simone Muench

We all know about the pedestal-effect:
     a person on a platform
         preens and the world adores,

tossing bras and glossolalia.
     Everybody knows that us girls
         just wanna fuck our fathers.

                     But it’s the glissade of his voice
                 through the ear to the stomach’s
             pit where the word “pine”

                     revolves, derived from pin —
                 pain: this ceaseless dialogue
             of bodies and glossaries.

“Let’s Get It On” plays
     on the nation’s station as we strip-
         tease on our sugardaddies’ knees.

Any specialist’s rhetoric can persuade us
     to undress: you don’t need to be a priest
         or a rock star to get into my dungarees.

                     These words are ravenous
                 he pulls from the galaxy
             of his mouth. They form

                     storm clouds, then suddenly
                 as sunlight, his tongue is suede
             and there’s a sway in my breathing.

“This lust is latent,” Freud would say
     but it was decided by unanimous vote
         that he spoke too much, so they forked

out his tongue; now he’s swilling
     whiskey with Jung, wishing
         he were still lascivious.

                     It’s not that I want him
                 in my bed nude, luminous
             in the turquoise light of the aquarium

                     but the sound of him, resound
                 of his voice falling into my ear: rain
             onto the spathe of a calla lily, glistening me.

Oh this sorry heart is a cliché with its imperative
     give me, give me, give me, as blood panics to-
         and-fro pronouncing its sentence of x’s and o’s.

“Without the word there is no world,” Schuster declares.
     I’d probably sleep with him too if he were cute,
         letting loose logos I didn’t know.

                     But longing is never as clear as a mirror.
                 Our face a shape in another’s face: diffracted
             a thousand times, and shining

                        and shining.

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Simone Muench is the author of five full-length collections including Orange Crush (Sarabande, 2010) and Wolf Centos (Sarabande, 2014), in addition to her recent chapbook Trace (Black River Award; BLP, 2014). She is a recipient of a 2013 NEA fellowship, as well as fellowships from Vermont Studio Center, Illinois Arts Council, Yaddo and others. She directs the writing program at Lewis University where she serves as faculty advisor for Jet Fuel Review. Recently, she was honored with the Meier Foundation for the Arts Achievement Award for innovation, achievements and community contributions. And, currently, she collaborates with Dean Rader on a book titled Frankenstein Sonnets.