Madcap/The Dracula
Scrapbook
It became a time of touching up nails
fastidiously the search for resonance
in today’s emergency
the forcing yourself to the end of the murder
the self-guided tour
or railroad fever, willful thinking
horseshit and scars
and I cannot say I get the folklore
one subversion a month
butter rings in the soup
the no time, the tap class in Omaha.
I don’t like the wood waiting
but it’s not you I snap at
the putting away but turn the heat down
pine needles stabbing me
in
the child-sized coat closet.
I am not the one to start the oscillationwith the small dog on Water Street
all the way to Nemaha
but I hide all the lipsticks
and I once thought the dredge
was a person.
I photograph better
in my Girl from Missouri
wide black and white hat
and you ask if I can send you
a penis of the plains
while men try to be big with religion.
Light-haired girls look the best
in soft icy colors
and every once in a while
I want the moon and get tired of hating the flame.
Every once in a while
I want to be nude in art-deco newness
change the color
change the veil between me and depression.
There’s nothing left but getting laid
drinking bloodsmoke on late-night TV
a bad taste in my mouth
but this isn’t rock bottom
and is it hunting season yet?
A cold sky a white-tailed white light?
House of Wax/Hunt Seat
The pink fades pretty quickly in a general sense
light-haired girls looking good
in soft, icy colors on their dead green skin
stitched up like November.
I give myself no time and I curse the time
in the grey bathtub hot sausage and dogskin
Nebraska northward boxcutter/boxelder
and necrotic signs. I slip up smear my cum
on the wall of the living room
set up the Predicta TV hissing a flame
leave the garbage to rot in the kitchen with peaches and crème.
You make a nest of my deaths and my chrome
my mushroom necklaces, dreams
forget I was excited once.
I wore skeleton gloves and danced like a swan
and you curse my interests
my weird accoutrements times I tried to shine
dead days and dry hair and heaves
and me falling asleep in the wood-paneled room
in the grey vacancy
as The Chordettes moan Mr. Sandman
and of course that one bitch
likes the clocks turning back
little steps here and there tied up in the cold.
It’s bad therapy
or I just stopped caring be orchid/be cozy
and sometimes I bundle vow to rise early
past any distraction
and leave for the campfire
and go ahead, run me over
my soap operas went off the air.
And sometimes I bundle after a lover
hope I don’t drip
hope I don’t chip off
lilac fingernail polish
touching inside me.
Bathhouse of Wax/Madcap Comes Across
If you really believe in chaos then this is paranoia
pretty god drawn and quartered
sometimes I bundle avoid any distraction
vow to leave early dream of flowered waters
but now it’s white pills and the holy standard’s
getting fucked against bauxite flat numerology
clawing the mahogany bar
they brought in one piece on the train car.
My brocade my high-waisted velvet pajamas
the dampness of the cabin making me sick
soft numerology making you slick
too many old fashioneds so let’s sit at the campfire
and say thank god the jockeys
don’t
have a key but the hounds still
drag me
toward my crystal ball crack-up Carole ends in an eand I’ll have a reason even on the dead beach
to turn back the clocks pin-curl my hair.
I found my art-deco heaven in the Predicta TV.
I found my oasis it broke in half
profane angel on your fingers
true confession slumming or dogging for quartz
the centrifugal way talking ghost stories
ash blonde in the arsenic blood and lead spring.
One spring is not electromagnetic
and I’m the tarantula girl high-hatting on caskets
and I’ll hike to your liver or kidney spring
my pubic bush like the forest queen velvet of rabbits
messy orange paint opaque
before Florida was invented.
I’ll be buried in a sportscar
the formaldehyde will wipe
right
off your fingers
since
comedy is a long-shot
I
don’t need the tragedy face.
Bathhouse of Wax/Arkansas Quartz
Have you ever lied? Have you ever lived on the wings of sin are death?
Have you ever fawned, found your art-deco heaven
diamonds washing up when it rains.
My fur and skirt burst into flames.
I glance up from my work expect a man
with a knife standing there or a crown.
He ties my fake wrists I’m not leaving the bathhouse
damn my privacy I’ll fuck the dead chief
spider spider inside her I’m hot and leaking
you hate
me since I’m brave
or
since I sit on the face of the girlat the rock shop lick bauxite
in the alien light of an art-deco night
the salt-scoop of the bathhouse
sweating it out as if you can be saved.
He ties my fake wrists we burn holy standards
the ghost of my manicure but have you looked at me with lust in your heart
a mercury rub or a camel twist?
Drugs on the saucer footsteps or death wages
diamonds washing up when it rains
they don’t look like diamonds there’s no time for thinking
flicker faint and thin
and how does the heat know
like a monster or an old lamp
and have you looked at me with lust in your heart
like something coming inside me.
Bathhouse Wax Snap
To Lombard is hard.
To be Lombard for up to ten days
you go outside the glow-in-the-dark blood
and a dance seems important
but it’s absurd to wear pink beads to keep the appointment
to drink modern wine when screwtops come too high.
Say hello to the speakeasy
red-stained hydraulics soak w/ baseball players
drink the tureen of vapor soup at The Aristocrat.
Hot Springs baseball black
I fuck Lucky Luciano the ghost of Russ Colombo
I lift myself out of the tub
becoming Catholic as my sleeping pills strangle
my family ties. I could tighten this compress
of time on my forehead ditching the nadir
my naked bod my forehead lines
and why aren’t the bathhouses open at night
marine architecture his funeral flowers.
I dreamed of a snake fake wrists
and his house on bathhouse row
and the rapist would really have to be something
to climb up these hills after me
and if you really believe in chaos
this is only paranoia but it’s hell to be afraid
of fox skulls and vodka. The foxes plant
their own gardens and I stay in them so long
little mole bones get caught in my hair.
Madcap One
I’ve seen enough of the vapors I’m ready to scream in the lake
okay by my coarse dress okay by my lies
so many razors some better than others
lavender platinum and soft hogs so thick
to touch up my manicure you hate my solitude
and it hasn’t rained in a month.
I roll myself in faux fur across the false crystal mine.
What pigs did I even try to say bye to?
Will I cry for the veins?
Will I cry for the vapors? The park ranger left his bad taste in my mouth.
Nails and tails look better done
but hell I don’t bother to wash my face.
Draw me a bath I’m not socratic. I’m not worth
dressing up for. I look best as a pink ham
draw me a bath in the sassafras dressing room
not as elaborate. Give me a tax break.
I’ll don your toga I’ll nap in my decoupaged coffin
psychotic on Templeton whiskey I’ll fuck in any language.
Draw me a false bath on the wrong map
draw me a diamond.
There are crystals inside me and balls but the hall of rocks
closed like it did in the 70s
and I’m comfortable with the limits of my history
and my suicide is its own excuse
and I’ll leave you my best liquors not the guest soup.
Jessie Janeshek's second full-length book of poetry 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. Read more at jessiejaneshek.net.