Portrait of Leonor Fini and Leonora Carrington in 1952.
Everything reflects. See the eye split on the edge of swamp water. See the black iron breastplate’s liquid glint, the umbrella architecture of a bat’s wet wing. Everything fragments. See the skin’s crepe etchings, the husk of vermillion bedcovers. See us twinned in acute accents: a platinum band binding our heads together
as we shear the difference between microscope and magnifying glass, as we rise over nightshade to uncover those who once cowered like blanched skulls.
When we emerge from medieval drapery, slipping out of our daytime skin, we reveal dried seed pods under our feet as a silk slip floats like a blue jay across the courtyard. Our faces tilt toward bestial glow as I release the scorpion from my mouth into your gloved hand.
Simone Muench is the author of seven poetry books, including Lampblack & Ash (Sarabande; Kathryn A. Morton Prize), Wolf Centos (Sarabande), and The Under Hum (co-written with Jackie K. White; Black Lawrence). She is a recipient of an NEA poetry fellowship as well as fellowships to VCCA, Prospect St. Writers’ House, Ragdale, and more.
Jackie K. White is the co-author, with Simone Muench, of Hex & Howl (Black Lawrence Press, 2021; Society of Midland Authors Honoree) and The Under Hum (Black Lawrence Press, 2024). Her collaborations have appeared in Conjunctions, American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, Ecotone, Salamander, Pleiades, and others.
Portrait of Leonor Fini and Leonora Carrington in 1952. 
