Jessie Janeshek
Chronophobia 1
In this version, Zephyr weds a communist blockhead
after three years of sinking
in sleeping-bag quicksand, Berlin
Hair frizzy, her fingers fall off from hand washing
potato sack panties in pairs
Jezebel faces the crow-footed zircon sun like the moon
knocking and knocking too far ahead
we know what's happened
Zephyr's already dead
Between Zephyr's Legs a Scritch and a Twing
Blink your light twice
should someone come in
while I culture the nipples'
silverblue milking machine
and the victim waits under
two backyards sleepy-eyed
tireswing preening
swollen with fox burrs and pods.
Old vines blur summerlines
the invisible treehouse
dovedead and burning like Myrrah
murmuring piss-lipped
hard luck all the mummers
scored by her pox.
Tentative Weather
Private-eye Zephyr
naps in the river
her cognitive dissonance
a color-block dress
Lon Chaney hurricane
lurks in the ferns
or sometimes the green velour
living room curtains
Vonnie kneels in the lettuce
wraps vines Maenad-like
Jezebel sucking a natural death
through to its pseudocide sour
it doesn't hold water
and none of the girls left
want the grapes anyway
No Claude Beauchene
"I think I'm mood-altering,"
Zephyr whispered in dark
cold-blooded landlubber
brows Joan Crawford-solid.
The two sisters nipped
kit-buttoned nighties
shared the same bed
muscle colored.
Moon dyed the drumskin
July-cum-December.
Jezebel drilled in
Zephyr's pink skull
poked baroque straws
sucking cherry.
The Gypsy Drum
thrums in the cattails
the automaton duo unfolds to rumba.
Zephyr mouths "no." Jezebel
spreading for everyone
horsewrecks her imagined
Argentinian back.
Stageknives disappear
in the horny boys' legs
when the new lucky number is eight.
J. wakes alone
guilt to the hilt
under the porchlight called Musca.