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Jessie Janeshek

The Clouds of the Father, Part 1

They said a red bride, a crowned baby, a snake
    strutting the bridge                 and who cares about bruises?

We track ekphrastic                                   the whole world should know it
want to feel clean                            (did we cause this?)

    Sex could happen tonight
wolf-grey                          piss-soaked pages.
Sex could be toxic.

*

We start from an amazing          place of decay
get mad when we don't
become star-crossed buns.

Dove-grey would be nicer                        and it's a new mindset
to wait until puke's cooling off.

*

How can we make                        a whole summer around us
coddling blue toes                        the slip and slide suicide seek?

We read a mood story            keep a ghost journal
drink frozen hot chocolate

contemplate, maybe                             long drives to the mall.

 

Sweet girls, hold your peace. Dream sensible wastelands, the seaside at Abilene.
Take your dirty closed minds from behind.
This is a bone-colored crocheted clip-on hairbow
a dysfunctional transmission of info.

 

Our thin-lipped mother
    leaves us for the sticks.
So we play solitaire.


The Clouds of the Father, Part 2

Nothing political in the hot Southern night
    our hands are dye-stained and air's tight.
Roving together in boats is prohibited.


You wake us when we're dreaming
    something else saved us
a lattice-eyed owl            a huge wooden deer in the lake.

    No lawnmower-maimed                    jewelry box secret
no crocheted handbasket                      handmade by Haroldine

so we walk abroad in humility
    shovel fresh shit, rub hands together
servile, Pentecostal.


We're tired of sharp badges, high tests, blind pines
    no pink banana seat            no pledge of allegiance.


You'd never have treated us
this way in the old days.


The Clouds of the Father, Part 3

Imagine a past: hex fenestration
      no aluminum parables
      no geese or brass fixtures.
A future: sleek suicide seek
so stuck in our own head
we can't concentrate
can't sense when we're dry.

Once there was holy itinerary
  red-fringed pageant dresses
We gathered dolls to save
  us from your spirit.
We sold gold vegetables.

*

We dream your road is covered in water
      the logic of long conversation
      the sun, one more coat.

The medicine's empty, but we drink it anyway
  sing to distract.
We feel a lapse, can't tell how ekphrastic
  you really are.

We wear a skirt w/skulls and moons on it.
We're unrelieved yet kind of prize-winning
      weightless            sore-throated.
  You'll find us dead in your tree.


The Clouds of the Father, Part 7

We go naked up the chimney
      pregnant, refeeding
    cradling the ravens
      brooms between our legs

and we remember, soot-sore and cow-drowned
the law of the tropics:
the more sex you have                 the less sex you want
and we love parabolas                star crunches
the family coven.

Nylon pants tight on our broad asses
on our sweaty weewees
we wake, trot glass archives
dressed to the ruins. We make smoke signals
and we have our own salt
our own poet laureate
and we can't help but start                   small saturate
    the sweep's sweet biography.

We have our own scalpels too big and too dirty
        and we're fine w/aesthetics and Ponderosa
since God is our motherdream
food is its cover girl
and good are black dogs.

We cluck, let the weather lie
    whimsies and witchcraft
three chipmunks dead in succession
but our souls will burn in the afterlife
as long as the reaper gets to us in time.


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