Self-Portrait Lined by Sándor Csoóri

Self-Portrait Lined by Sándor Csoóri Simone Muench (bio) and Jackie K. White (bio) Keywords poetry, Simone Muench, Jackie K. White, perseverance, portrait, women, predictions, revolt, institutions The last spring shall come, the last summer, too,so no to politicians peddling impotence, no to preachers stitching our lips into eclipse, we wantthe misfits, the women unafraid of descent, every casualty of belittlement and shushto rush a broad day reckoning. So we say no to spectacle, to swollen misanthropes withbloated gods, to doctors chalking us in gauze. The almanac and the midwives are donewith warnings: these are sick days, yes, and, as if a monster had teeth made of gold,the sky opens its sunlit jaws and swallows. End Page 195 Simone Muench simone muench is the recipient of an NEA Poetry Fellowship, the Meier Foundation for the Arts Award, and the 2023 Lewis University Career Scholarship Award. She is the author of seven full-length books, including Wolf Centos (Sarabande). Her recent, The Under Hum, co-written with Jackie K. White, is forthcoming from Black Lawrence Press in 2024. Jackie K. White jackie k. white has published three previous chapbooks and, with Simone Muench, Hex & Howl (Black Lawrence Press.) Their full-length book, The Under Hum, is forthcoming in 2024, also with BLP. Professor emerita at Lewis University, Jackie's poems, translations, and collaborative poems appear in such journals as APR, Bayou, Pleiades, and Shenandoah. Copyright © 2024 The Massachusetts Review, Inc