BURNING HOUSE PRESS

blood-red nails        tiny ferns    or creek-side bloodletting

    he swears rain is coming

and, oh yeah, she’s pregnant

    and they name all their kids    after each other

    ink changing color, blend in

and their defense is to present me

            as a wild woman in red on fast horses out of our time

but I know every minute of every week

        toward the moor or the seashore.

You say I’m futuristic        but I’m cloyingly nostalgic

    well-read in the gothic        abandoning

the conga line of bleached blondes    to forcefeed the dying cat

        Christmas crackers and charades

and wink if it’s a murder    plaid pants and my father’s failed guillotine trick.

    If you have time I’ll teach you        stuffed with sweet pecans

otherwise you can look in the clear purse

    with the blue gingham pocket for secrets

            vampires haunting New England

        and Vampira on late-nite TV.

I wear a wig like hers    but I’m not starving you

    in my smart suit    in my flowered shell

        and all the good noirs take place by the Hollywood Bowl

a minute per page in the trick house we hear them

    except the one where the girl falls off the boat

in her stolen furs

        and you gut a dog to switch on your sex drive

        and I waterski to our eroding island

sex twice in the summer    a middy dress play

    fat caterwauls

so even when her coat’s shiny        I won’t forget she’s dying.

    I pray for an earlier night no matter what

I pray to come in the storm in a full-skirted green dress. 

    I’m saving it up for the riverbed chase scene

            for the wasp-waisted Los Angeles rainbow

        for the end is immortal/immoral

        for the femme fatale exits unscathed.

Jessie Janeshek’s three full-length collections are MADCAP (Stalking Horse Press, 2019), The Shaky Phase (Stalking Horse Press, 2017) and Invisible Mink (Iris Press, 2010). Her chapbooks include Spanish Donkey/Pear of Anguish (Grey Book Press, 2016), Rah-Rah Nostalgia (dancing girl press, 2016), Supernoir (Grey Book Press, 2017), Auto-Harlow (Shirt Pocket Press, 2018), Hardscape (Reality Beach, forthcoming), and Channel U (Grey Book Press, forthcoming). Read more at jessiejaneshek.net.