Two Poems
Olivia Muenz
Poetry
05 March 2025
Down the Hatch
There’s a tiny man with a ladder on my lid. He keeps
tugging me down. He’s shouting Fire! Fire! in my
crowded theater. There is a big crowd behind my lid.
Their voices come together to drown me out. They’re
looking for a great escape. My I’s burning, I put on a
show for them. I tap dance on the fire escape, smoke
billowing from my ears. The crowd never learned
Morse code and I never learned to talk.
Poem
I live in a snow globe of language
Which word will fall on my head?
The so-called real world is more statuesque
than whatever’s going on in here
You big old fish-eyed monster
Get back get back get back
Quit winding me up to sing for you
Quit shaking me so fast
Olivia Muenz is a disabled writer from New York. She is the author of poetry collection I Feel Fine (Switchback Books, 2023), which won the 2022 Gatewood Prize, and chapbook Where Was I Again (Essay Press, 2022). She received a BA from New York University and an MFA in creative writing from Louisiana State University, where she received the Robert Penn Warren Thesis Award in prose. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in New England Review, The Missouri Review, Poetry Daily, Michigan Quarterly Review, Gulf Coast, Conduit, Black Warrior Review, Pleaides, Massachusetts Review, Denver Quarterly, and elsewhere. Her writing has been supported by the Tin House Summer Workshop, Zoeglossia, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and NYFA. Find her online at oliviamuenz.com.