Poetry of Simone Muench > Woodland Pattern Book Center

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Simone Muench

Simone Muench’s first book The Air Lost in Breathing won the Marianne Moore Prize for Poetry (Helicon Nine, 2000). Her second Lampblack & Ash

received the Kathryn A. Morton Prize for Poetry (Sarabande Books, 2005), and was one of the editor’s selections in the New York Times Book Review. She has poems forthcoming or published in Iowa Review, Poetry, American Poet, Caffeine Destiny and others. She received her Ph.D from the University of Illinois at Chicago, and is currently an assistant professor at Lewis University. She sits on the Switchback Books board of advisors and is also a contributing editor to Sharkforum where she presents a “poem of the week” series, as well as being an avid horror film fan.

Drowning by the Light of Oranges

Simone Muench

I pinned a star
on the shadow
of your shoulder.

It sucked darkness
into a mandarin flame
where you leaned

against a boat
overflowing with ice
and oranges. You're

a pinned flame,
an asterisk of snow
disappearing in the thin

isolation of my dress;
in nightcrush and suck,
ice shines

metal flowers.
The river carries stars.
Fish bones flicker

beneath the surface
littered with trout silk
and snow.

Your shoulder aligns
itself with the stars—
orange light isolates

shadows of boats
that appear flickering
silk on the ice-

flowered river. I go under
the snow's crush, an
asterisk pinned in by

your shoulder. Your shadow.

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