Jessie Janeshek
Fragile Jezebel / Birthday Advent
Hair bunned like a schoolmarm
wickered, hush monied
this legless woman
floats out to see
her gold vinyl mattress
piss-scented. Run
by a joystick. Shift to the T.
Hoop-skirted, terminal
hanging crepe
from her lashstubs.
All two eggs in her basket
refuse to sing orange.
(A Pageant Poem) Pouring Green Acid
on three Queen Bee noses poor little lowlight
intuiting swimsuits red open-toe shoes
come with me heelprints it’s talent, her flossing
callipygian fiddles but poor little nomad’s
too sick to take off or even ask how
she let that priest rip off her autumn
he runs like a girl leaves yellow ashes
beech cats typing nonce poems
all over the orangeskin of each calico whore
poor little smokethroat needing to swallow
this bone called sadness or land hard and crack it
Full-House Chronophobia / Hide-Out Room
You climb exhausted
sepia knifehand
bile-gleaming the banister
Marc Antony gasping
we’ll try all the remedies
mascara elixir
weaving the backstairs
noir web they’ll believe
post-cabaret heel-glue
a Chinese air gun
Marc Antony gaping.
Cops cast their dragnets
bear-trapping Ziegfeld girls
costumed as moths.
Put on this dovecoat
do not interrupt me
recoulementing
our alibi lullaby
Marc Antony bobbing
your blueblack hair dawn.
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Jessie Janeshek’s first book of poems is Invisible Mink (Iris Press, 2010). The 2011-2012 Renner Visiting Scholar/Assistant Professor of English at Bethany College in Bethany, WV, she teaches writing and American literature. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of Tennessee-Knoxville and an M.F.A. from Emerson College. In 2008, she co-edited the literary anthology Outscape: Writings on Fences and Frontiers (KWG Press).