For best results, choose a prediction

                        damaging fungus                                existing in plain sun

hair tangled                             no cosmic                                layer of irony.

For best results, close off                   or else walk through the pain

            walk there in a day     your blue skirt, hips busting

your awkwardness not enough                                   to keep you away.

                                    Why did you say                     to exist to make money

                        and drink champagne was ugly?

                                                Why didn’t you say                 Harlow’s hair falling out

                                    when living past her seemed impossible?

For best results, the iconic                  white dress and the virus

                        a dual suicide                          me & Harlean

            in an in-between decade

a walk across Venice Beach               intravenous barbiturates.

Why did you say                     a skull and two fingers

to get off, clear crystals                                   and blondeness all over

                        to lie in a stone circle              outside of Bakersfield

a martyr for Palm Springs                   both lip-sets shot wet?

                                    For best results, what are we doing this for?

Moving forward through a false childhood    through a decade of me is a tease

            blood-matted              bad dye jobs                blonde doppelgangers

                        like deer, the long-legged divorcees

overwhelmed by the drugs and the gloves and the clothes.

            For best results, close off.       They say if you see

your twin lose her head then you die

            and the caps on the Venice Beach waves

                        sparkle like toothpaste

essential tremors                                 giggly with bubbles

            a large church                                      paper lovers

cheaters and cameras                          making me cheep

            pillowslip satin                                                serving all masters

                        better than nothing      and abducted X-rays

                                    for more than just bones.

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), Hardscape (Reality Beach, forthcoming), Supernoir (Grey Book Press, 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.