Philip Jenks, Simone Muench

Philip Jenks published two volumes of poetry, On the Cave You Live In(Flood Editions, 2002) and My First Painting will be “The Accuser” (Zephyr Press, 2005). He gratefully collaborates with Simone Muench. Their poems have appeared in a range of journals and in the chapbook Little Visceral Carnival (Cinematheque Press, 2009). He also collaborated with Sasha Miljevic, publishing Distance, an ekphrastic hybrid of prose and poetry (Dutch Art Institute, 2009). He recently completed his third manuscript, Colony Collapse. Last year, his poems appeared in the first Chicago snow, but they blew away.

Simone Muench’s third book Orange Crush will be published by Sarabande, 2010. Cinematheque Press published her collaborative chapbook Little Visceral Carnival written with Philip Jenks. She is a professor, vegetarian, horror film fan and editor of Sharkforum.

---------

Dear Victorian Beauty—

You are a filament of history—gothic fragment,

narcissus booty—

I dare not touch

your nightshade eyes

but burn for being.

Spurned: strap me

in your harnesses

that I may not resist

the raven lace of your silhouette;

rum & rosewater of unfurling hair

swings over me. I’m cataleptic

in your presence, a drunk

present under aging halls.

Billowing denial of sexual activity

held at bay by whalebone corset.

Bustle-smothered lover.

Search your paramour for what whipped

yearning, your sternum humming

its bright bee garden.

Breath pollinates a population

repressed & etched

into animalism

then with demur, expulsion.

You envied ghosts their dissolving diagnosis,

their silver fir countenance

& capitulated to body as ambience,

festooned with gorgeous flesh armies:

each an empire,

each an arm with extended wrist.

Say goodbye

to all that’s wrung

from beauty with fists

that would forge the yellow wallpaper

& call the crawling sexy.

On Hiatus

Philip Jenks, Simone Muench - Poetry

MonthlyFeatures

WrittenArtists

InformationCenter

DonateThrough Paypal