They made Eve an event, a teleology
we’ve teethed too many mouths upon, jawing
uneven through supposed apple skin. We’ve
seeded and ceded enough. Enough gnawing
on our bones by canonized men. Let fang
become fallout, reverse this ache, this sorry.
Let bees shimmer inside our eyes instead
of men’s glory. Let’s mouth a modern story,
revise every exodus, each line of dread
they put upon us in sackcloth or satin.
We took the garden with us, now the gavel
is our godhead. We’ll not be suckled or bled
to ghosts again. We’re the heart’s rattle,
razored at our core. Full of sharp. Full of sheen.
Simone Muench is the author of six books, including Wolf Centos (Sarabande, 2014). Her recent, Suture, includes sonnets written with Dean Rader (BLP, 2017). She is an editor of They Said: A Multi-Genre Anthology of Contemporary Collaborative Writing (BLP, 2018) and curator of the HB Sunday Reading Series in Chicago. Additionally, she serves as chief faculty advisor for Jet Fuel Review and as a senior poetry editor for Tupelo Quarterly.
Jackie K. White is a professor at Lewis University and a faculty advisor for Jet Fuel Review. Recent poems appear in Tupelo Quarterly and Superstition Review along with collaborative poems published or forthcoming in Pleiades, Isthmus, Posit, and Cincinnati Review. She has published three chapbooks and served as an assistant editor for the collaborative anthology, They Said.
Jackie K. White is a professor at Lewis University and a faculty advisor for Jet Fuel Review. Recent poems appear in Tupelo Quarterly and Superstition Review along with collaborative poems published or forthcoming in Pleiades, Isthmus, Posit, and Cincinnati Review. She has published three chapbooks and served as an assistant editor for the collaborative anthology, They Said.