Outside, lining the hushed cul-de-sac,
dogwood white and pink blossoms peak
to petal cascades hiding more basement
girl-held horrors. The pastoral not speaking
of rot. The suburban silent about ruin.
But the girls speak—of shatter, of strangle.
Of broken teeth, of more danger. The body
bent acutely into shame. Dear dark garden
where you buried me, where you watched my bare
feet slipping, his ropy arms grabbing, his full
body falling on my trunk, breaking limbs
with an inarticulate hiss, say now how I was
blackened under crush of shovel and loam.
Backyard afterlife, a new rage, an old, old wrong.
Simone Muench is the author of six full-length books, including Wolf Centos (Sarabande, 2014) and Orange Crush (Sarabande, 2010). Her recent, Suture, includes sonnets written with Dean Rader (Black Lawrence, 2017). She is an editor of They Said: A Multi-Genre Anthology of Contemporary Collaborative Writing (Black Lawrence, 2018) and creator of the HB Sunday Reading Series in Chicago. Additionally, she serves as 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. She was just named the 2019 winner of the Reid H. Montgomery Distinguished Service Award by the CMA. Recent poems appear in Tupelo Quarterly, along with collaborative poems published or forthcoming in Pleiades, The Journal, Isthmus, Posit, Bennington Review, Hypertext Review, and Cincinnati Review. She has published three chapbooks, and served as an assistant editor for the collaborative anthology, They Said.
Hypertext Magazine and Studio (HMS) publishes original, brave, and striking narratives of historically marginalized, emerging, and established writers online and in print. HMS empowers Chicago-area adults by teaching writing workshops that spark curiosity, empower creative expression, and promote self-advocacy. By welcoming a diversity of voices and communities, HMS celebrates the transformative power of story and inclusion.
We have earned a Platinum rating from Candid and are incredibly grateful to receive partial funding from the National Endowment for the Arts, Illinois Humanities, Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events, and Illinois Arts Council.
If independent publishing is important to you, PLEASE DONATE.
