Wolf Centos - Simone Muench

Simone Muench grew up under the influence of Universal Horror films, Boone’s Farm, Southern Baptist sermons, and country roads. Recently the recipient of a 2013 NEA Poetry Fellowship and the Fall 2012 Black Lawrence Chapbook Award, some of her other honors include two Illinois Arts Council Fellowships, two Vermont Studio Center Fellowships, a 2013 Lewis Faculty Scholar Award, and the PSA’s Bright Lights Big Verse Award. In addition to serving as an editor for Sharkforum and chief faculty advisor for Jet Fuel Review, she is the author of four full-length collections: The Air Lost in Breathing (Marianne Moore Prize; Helicon Nine, 2000), Lampblack & Ash (Kathryn A. Morton Prize; Sarabande, 2005), Orange Crush (Sarabande, 2010), and Disappearing Address, co-written with Philip Jenks (BlazeVOX, 2010). She is an Associate Professor at Lewis University in Illinois.

1.

[I saw my life a wolf loping along the road]
[Sea-blue, shot through]
[I transformed into this thing, this beautiful]
[Outside the new world winters in grand dark]
[Very quick. Very intense, like a wolf at a live heart]
[When tenderness seems tired]
[Who will take the madness from the trees?]
[Stunned by gold, we see coming]
[In the space of a half-open gold door]
[We: spectators, always, everywhere]
[In moon-swallowed shadows]
[Under somber firs two wolves mingled]
[Desire discriminates & language]
[It was a desire rather than a boat]
[There are wolves in the next room]

2.

[I have lost my being in so many beings]
[A stranger's coming past]
[Nothing remains of you. The city]
[From this bleak hotel, & at the bored]
[Like a blue-blooded corona, I knocked]
[All song of the woods is crushed]
[After the first snow has fallen to its squalls]
[No cause you should weep, Wolf]
[Here in this town, in a glass honeycomb]
[Everything in these parts is geared
[How long have I left you?-played the wolf]
[Beyond the baying of a snow wolf]
[Having erased all the past like a false eye]
[Cripple of light opening against my back]
[A year ago we all flushed a little brighter]
[The wolf licks her cheeks with]
[They promised me a silence]
[First frost blackens with a cloven hoof]

3.

[I have looked too long into human eyes]
[I dream you into being-mongering wolf]
[With flowers in their lapels, nine]
[November stands at the door.]
[You hear things. I see them. ]
[I watch my life running away]
[There is a wolf in me, sound]
[Everyone in the room wore white masks]
[All night the wolves danced]
[Shrewd wolf of dark innocence]
[In the yellow chalk of my diminishing bones]
[I want to be strung up and singled out]
[What do we leave, living]