© 2014 by Simone Muench
FIRST EDITION
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced without written permission of the publisher. Please direct inquiries to:
Managing Editor
Sarabande Books, Inc.
2234 Dundee Road, Suite 200
Louisville, KY 40205
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Muench, Simone, 1969–
[Poems. Selections]
Wolf centos / Simone Muench.
pages cm
Summary: “Centos are a patchwork form that originated around 300 AD; WOLF CENTOS places poets in conversation with one another across centuries and continents. In this volume Muench sutures her poems together with the motifs of the wolf, language, loss, desire, and transformation. The ultimate knowledge of these poems is that as we age and experience loss, we must retain our “wildness” inside of us”— Provided by publisher.
I. Title.
PS3563.U358W68 2014
811'.54—dc23
2013048734
Cover art based on the piece Caminos de los Perros, by Kim Ambriz.
Cover and interior layout by Kirkby Gann Tittle.
eBook ISBN: 978-1-936747-88-7
Sarabande Books is a nonprofit literary organization.
| This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts. | |
| The Kentucky Arts Council, the state arts agency, supports Sarabande Books with state tax dollars and federal funding from the National Endowment for the Arts. |
CONTENTS
1. The question of the wolves turns & turns
[I saw my life a wolf loping along the road]
[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]
[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]
2. Desire discriminates & language discriminates
[Desire discriminates & language]
[It was a desire rather than a boat]
[In moon-swallowed shadows]
[Under somber firs two wolves mingled]
[There are wolves in the next room]
[I have lost my being in so many beings]
[How long have I left you?—played the wolf]
[Beyond the baying of a snow wolf]
[Here in this town, in a glass honeycomb]
[Nothing remains of you. The city]
3. Each letter a closed house
[From this bleak hotel, & at the bored]
[The day’s long madness has drained]
[In the wood-world’s torn despair, where winter]
[A stranger’s coming past]
[All song of the woods is crushed]
[After the first snow has fallen to its squalls]
[No cause you should weep, Wolf]
[Everything in these parts is geared]
[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]
4. Every transformation is possible
[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 in a strong light & singled out]
[What do we leave, living]
Source Material
Acknowledgments
The Author
1. The question of the wolves turns & turns
All the poetry has wolves in it, Pam.
—The Doors screenplay
I saw my life a wolf loping along the road—
a glint of bone, visible & then gone,
a landscape altered.
Ideas, hair, fingers
fall & come to naught.
A shirt blows across the field.
A shrug of stars as flowers go out on the sea.
Maybe