Makeup makes the lie and I’m afraid of your bleach
my legs/the trees open. To motivate myself
I dream Kim Novak white lights in the clouds the self-control suicide note.
Memory is a construct and you make it complacent
say I’ll fall off the high dive break my head or my neck.
I dream winter in summer a pink horse and your brain
fawning in the cold river.
Makeup motivates the blonde-stopping time the impossible night
already on dead clouds and the clown car
tire tracks the bloody ship we dress up
or down so we search for his tie-tack.
So many blondes got forgotten
but the ruby one with the gun got hit head on.
I went through a phase when I wanted nothing but pretty
so much to look at
but always the haunt of the clock.
I gave myself limits lying the dolls out gust, dusky velvet
brushing their curls.
The clock’s face was a woman
tan, thick-lipped and funny
a woman who swam in a checkered bikini
the bubble bath bottles shaped like southern belles
bobbing around her. The self-help book tells me
she has intimate value
she bobs in bed like a doll
memory is a construct
and your life’s not a wall.
I used to think if I touched your book with two fingers
it would keep you from dying
but your lump itself was a planet
and I’m not any saner. I just won’t say foster hunger
unmoving, existing.
Enlighten the daughter but I’m not any saner
and there’s a skull in the garden and the only solution
is jewelry or furs or intense preoccupation.
I reenact her bleach her lack of personal hygiene
I fall off the ladder
and hello, I feel dread a crescent moon beauty mark on my cheek
or your orange wig head
and I throw your skull in the river
and I light it up by hope or by dope
and make it a cemetery.
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), Auto-Harlow (Shirt Pocket Press, 2018), and Hardscape (Reality Beach, forthcoming). Invisible Mink (Iris Press, 2010) is her first full-length collection. You can read more of her poetry at jessiejaneshek.net.
VAGABOND CITY 