Tuesday poem #470 : Jessie Janeshek : Bargain of the Century

 

 

There are silk sheets on sale

time travel/time travail

hotfoot it downtown in your heels and cloche hat.

I can’t sleep tonight

I worry about the days snapping

jazz baby up                 jazz baby down

on a cold night I can’t play the piano.

 

On a cold night in Hot Springs

I worried my fate.

I’ll always know the skin and bones smell

but never the smell of a baby.

There was an old woman out by the graveyard

who smelled like a cat. 

I played her voice alone in the car.

 

I’m in my Arkansas headspace

big pink sunglasses

an acid square at my lips.

Sleep is defense

but I so want to be slapstick.

 

I pull the watch spring from my mouth like spaghetti. 

I lose my shit in the ballroom

slipsliding pink gumballs

but there are only four pills left

and your money spilled everywhere.

 

 

 

 

 

Jessie Janeshek's 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), Channel U (Grey Book Press, 2020) and Hardscape (Reality Beach 2020). Read more at jessiejaneshek.net.

 

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan