I guess I would have heard if she were dead
hanging hankies from the clothesline
it’s the fear in the red dress
complicity/complexity keeping me away
or my misunderstanding of hot consommé
a rose-colored marquee and silent movie faces
and why was she trying to woo him
with a ripped silk shawl and pilgrim imitations
as a little girl watched the screen
and left to pick some violets glass slicing through her ligaments
almost lost a finger.
The burdens are broken the cat’s meow buttons
and/or the blondie from Brooklyn
in the graveyard with gold heels
or a throwback trap trampling
in a green evening gown
overplaying the teeth
in the light of the evening.
She was a pretty girl her gold was comedy
her gift was associative birds and a cold
a live wire gone dead were it not for connections
or bloody cookies.
The truth was she got old and never won over her public
and pre-code was a man’s world
and blood ran over the moon
and through the pink lambs
suspiciously backlit
and cameras were heavy
so she gassed herself wrapped in fur.
Note: He Who Gets Slapped is a 1924 film.
Nothing Sacred
I never promised you a rose garden
or a ladder to climb up from your radio waves
or a ladder to climb up from the grave
where my father made and married a windmill.
I dream of an easel radium glowing
a match girl tap tapping big sheets of paper
madcap give me faith as I cry, cry cry
mop off the poison
fire planes fill days
a bag lady at Our Lady of Lourdes
slashing the amniotic sac.
Do you want your pink dog in a sack?
This part is broken sliding bed pans
under the shadows taking my temperature
with the false thermometer
turning the red strip to say I’m burning up
tied-on tags or jokes apples quiet on Saturdays
oh, it’s a big fire.
This part’s also broken lightning bolt on my shoulder
spelling blonde with an e
showering ten times to take up more time
lying in bed to read forever
the children’s book on the murder
half-back shoulders and lipstick
the purple horse waiting for me to be wrecked.
Reality is what’s seen
applejack good legs my face slice/long takes
a sunset resistor a teenage room corner
trained on my knees
to take sentiment.
Note: “Oh, it’s a big fire” is a line from the film Nothing Sacred.
BUtterfield 8
I was going to identify walking to the aviary
w/ a double set of eyelashes
under the bridge in the dirty steel city
a tube in my throat/milk on my tongue
or broken bones or scotch for breakfast
one red riding hood and three men in a hotel room.
I meditate on the fact that thinking of you might be bad for me
or I meditate the immediacy
that this song only works if there’s shame.
We meditate on immediacy
how you thought I was someone else
from the eyebrows up in the bar bathroom
sudden showers I wander
I’m sick w/ three x’s.
I wander the snow showing shrift to our sex
and how I think my death
might have something to do
with my car fire and ice lips and tips
a leopardskin coat
and the primary color of winter.
After the crash it’s bathetic
I’ll live for an hour unconscious.
Yet in the dream I pull you to bed
past the gold and the dogs and you hesitate.
Note: This poem gleans some of its ideas and imagery from the 1960 film BUtterfield 8.
Fly Me to the Moon
The first autumn I spent afternoons crying
then rallied in high boots
blonde crazy in burgundy light
then walked up the hill
my heart-shaped neckline too summery
or I wore a corset brace
sad jazzy music to work myself on
and off in dark houses of therapy
or I worked on the zombie collage in the hammock
thought I was safe in this fiction
since you believed in time-sensitive philosophies
not images milling around tiny lights.
In the red car carpe diem over and over
glitter on my eyelids the same denim dress
you said my belly looked good as I let
the plastic vampire pretend to gnaw off my finger
leave the cherry-scented adhesive gems
and hello operator in the hospital I played my horoscope
or the olive green switchboard
You said use your acting skills or in other words strum the guitar
in front of a primitive backdrop relationships are mercenary
sticky chocolate for the patriarchy
and you said the abortion sent an unwanted soul
back up as I fainted
and how did I ever believe in crushed velvet
the valley of summer larceny
brittle 8-tracks in the basement or the erosion of community memory?
You said the abortion sent an unwanted soul up
and I identified its pearls the perils and furs of the hard way
seven girls posing in front of the witch jail
with dead lips and victory rolls
or seven girls snapping you off at the knee
so your corpse would fit in the bathtub.
Jessie Janeshek's second full-length book of poems is The Shaky Phase (Stalking Horse Press, 2017). Her chapbooks are Spanish Donkey/Pear of Anguish (Grey Book Press, 2016), Rah-Rah Nostalgia (dancing girl press, 2016), Supernoir (Grey Book Press, 2017), Hardscape (Reality Beach, forthcoming), and Auto-Harlow (Shirt Pocket Press, forthcoming). Invisible Mink (Iris Press, 2010) is her first full-length collection. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of Tennessee-Knoxville and an M.F.A. from Emerson College. You can read more of her poetry at jessiejaneshek.net.
