Future Girls with Bikinis beneath Bruce Springsteen Tees by Jessie Janeshek

Future Girls with Bikinis beneath Bruce Springsteen Tees

Jessie Janeshek

We’re grim and we mystify
          abominable quadrants
          the worst problem to have.
          We’re shy when we dial
          1-900 lines
          at the fire station payphone
          to talk of end times.

A peanut butter Snickers                                                               a unicorn moodring
          a chipped Harpo Marx statue
are what represent                                                                preteen body stink.

This is cold comfort                                              it’s group iconicity
          half-mourning
          horsemanning                                              town swingsets.

          It’s all kinds of awesome.
                     We’re a fever-sweet witness
                     a green antique switchboard
                     our 15 whole minutes                     to wax deathly sick.

                                                                                 Are we under obligation
                                                                                 to confess a non-haunting
                                                                       when, in the selfie            our head looks
                                                                                                                                     cut off from our body?

We want blacker lips
in our white veil of ignorance
an otter in our Potter box
and not to be trivial.

                                                                                 Our nurse blows our hair dry
                                                                                 in the collective iron lung
                                                                                 but it still seems like last night
                                                                                 we were milking
                                                                                 your fat ass to sleep.

Jessie Janeshek's first book of poems is Invisible Mink (Iris Press, 2010). An Assistant Professor of English and the Director of Writing at Bethany College, she holds a Ph.D. from the University of Tennessee-Knoxville and an M.F.A. from Emerson College. She co-edited the literary anthology Outscape: Writings on Fences and Frontiers (KWG Press, 2008). You can read more of her poetry at jessiejaneshek.net.

ISSUE EIGHT: Melty Slayers | next poem →