Country Music
Yard’s bald of flood.
Rain botches the night
pours through Steve McQueen’s
tomb, Tennessee louvers.
I try to decide
this tight vow, your parting
since I can’t forget
the look in his eyes
when we fucked reading Nietzsche.
He stayed inside me
died once he’d braided
my legs to the side of this house.
Moon smells like danger.
Raccoons masquerade as Ed Gein.
lapping placenta
under aluminum wings.
I find the trapdoor.
humming and bleeding.
You’re born by my knife.
Hot Rood
Mrs. Japheth nails my arms
pours Dark Whore for the hounds
who lick blessed across a barn wall
tighten up my tits.
Old Grey snarls my moth ate his blister
one false hope and I’ll be cured.
Rats twinkle Esmerelda
from the nails above the chifferobe
Nerf balls dropping from the loft
as Japheth fists my sister
wiping out her snifter
with scratch-and-sniff black ink.
Jessie Janeshek's full-length book of poems is Invisible Mink (Iris Press, 2010). Her chapbook Rah-Rah Nostalgia is forthcoming from dancing girl press. 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.
