GATHER AROUND OBSESSION by JESSIE JANESHEK

by Vagabond City Literary Journal

the wooden bridge stretching              over black cacti.

 

Remember calves breaking                  as fast as you can.

 

What do you tell                                  your body paraded?

 

That you’re not satisfied until you’re sick in the dark


eating tamales                                      hair stuck to your back?

 

                              That days unwind

 

around your glass pussy.                      That microwaving

 

enraptures the sawhorse?

 

That Billy the Kid                               peels the skin off your legs

 

that this time the cognitive

 

dissonance fishnets?

 

                              Winter is bland

 

and counterintuitive.                           Numb-full of pink

 

tongues and routine.                            Numb-full of all

 

the gone gory poems                            trickling cold

 

in a yard lit by goddamns.

 

                  Remember deer shatter

 

                  your Peter Pan leaving

 

the wicker darkness                 of junkyard cars

 

licking yourself                                    pretending you’re pregnant

 

stuck on saliva and stars.

—–

Jessie Janeshek’s second full-length book of poems, The Shaky Phase, is forthcoming from Stalking Horse Press. Her chapbooks are Spanish Donkey/Pear of Anguish (Grey Book Press, 2016), Rah-Rah Nostalgia, (dancing girl press, 2016), and Hardscape (Reality Beach, forthcoming, 2017), and her first full-length collection is Invisible Mink (Iris Press, 2010). An 35-year-old 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). Read more of her poetry at jessiejaneshek.net.
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Vagabond City Literary Journal

Founded in 2013, we are a literary journal dedicated to publishing outsider literature. We publish art, prose, reviews, and interviews from marginalized creators.