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Jessie Janeshek

Chronophobia 1

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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

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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

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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

Her truth is a liar
  it doesn't hold water

and none of the girls left
  want the grapes anyway


No Claude Beauchene

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"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

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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.


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