Poetry Suite by Jesse Janeshek
“her flesh always fanning the furnace breath back”
Poetry by Jessie Janeshek
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Rapid Mary Catechism
Little lamb, who made
this late hike through dead fireflies
this loneliness cage
this playsuit these eggs?
Our asscheeks blooming
summersun circles
our fur the bristle of broom
I believe in his red fink
his malignant scent
green magic, his rat face.
One-eyed, magnetic
I dance his disease
wounds painted on
trot toward Skull Chalet
believe in his gold mood
his blood food, your rape.
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Dog Star Martyrology
We’re exceptionally worried about the missing Christine
who filed her incisors into vampire fangs.
She had a hard life
vacuumed and spidered and covered in lawn dust
her flesh always fanning the furnace breath back.
She built up immunity fantasized dry sands
off Colorado
at the church pool party
thick under pinstripe
summer sun sick as the one in Milan.
Now infection’s spreading
her legskin comes off
her charm bracelet shakes its Colonial flags
two boys beat her braintree with rocks.
She drinks a blood cocktail desperate diet of saints
since it takes some time to sabotage snakes.
She follows the tall man into the woods
with his cockles, his raw meat, his two-headed sheep.
We fill out a form to stay in our bed away from the stab wounds
through catcalls and vodka the tableau vivants:
in which they drown her with stones
in which two arrows fundraise
her chest tenderized
Satan’s little surprise
in which she’s dunked w/ a goat in the quicksand
and the curious circus stays still for strength
hot tar and a haircut
they can’t take the excitement
in which she’s bound to the wheel at the crossroads
in blue daisy dukes wall-eyed and chirping
disarticulate.
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I Adorn the Saint’s Wheel
Nestle Against the Dog and Your Reign
No more illusory pool parties
no more blood cupcakes no more bat licks.
I’m old in the face
so it’s hard to say
how much time I have left in this sky belt
but your martyrology will still surround me
w/ colorstay polka dot cocks.
You’ll use your time as wise as a castle
to hijack the truck bypass the robbery
drive us to revival.
I’ll suck your crooked black neck
viable-eyed since it’s picturesque to pretend
I am not a machine
I do not dread your intimacy.
A woman can kill people easily
hot thinking pink quarry.
I push my gun in a stroller
past the clouds of the father
the clowns in the purple Dodge Caravan.
You take my dress off.
I put it back on again.
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Revenge, Prehistoric
I want to hike these dry trails
with the stars
of a lesbian vampire movie
climb the rose-knot rock shelter
warm our necks alive.
Loss is comprehensive and I have curiosity
two men on a tractor
stung by hogweed
the purple-spot smell driving out
the sex scent.
She came sick, couldn’t swim
loved the inanimate
chirping a yellow bike skating skirt cigarette swingset.
She stopped at the gas station
for a Slush Puppie
those two boys beat her with pipes
came home in a blood-stained bikini
six teeth in her hands.
I find myself in their skulls
goat-shaped heads like pineapples under duress.
I plug in my blind narrator
but I don’t kill them yet.
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Header image courtesy of Anna Mckay. To view a gallery of her art on NAILED, go here.
Jessie Janeshek's chapbooks Spanish Donkey/Pear of Anguish and Rah-Rah Nostalgia are forthcoming from Grey Book Press and dancing girl press respectively. Her full-length collection of poems is Invisible Mink (Iris Press, 2010). An Assistant Professor of English and the Director of Writing at Bethany College, she holds a Ph.D. from the University of Tennessee-Knoxville and an M.F.A. from Emerson College. She co-edited the literary anthology Outscape: Writings on Fences and Frontiers (KWG Press, 2008). You can read more of her poetry: here.