Take the L to Union Square
code mottled and nuanced the sun setting at seven
when you’re having an affair.
Gentrification permits anonymity
each girl a gypsy with curly blue hair
virgin ringworm on her leg
or walking the street all night in a silver coat
Elevator-to-the-Gallows style waiting for a lover
or Greenpoint or a razor blade.
This is a land of the hanging cloud
the pear-shaped book of death or meat-packing
in any other language.
This is the blonde in the jar fetal beaver
dark-lipped and partially gothic
but not enough to bartend in the land of hanging clouds.
Please be a blanker game
a heavier itinerary please more black velour
and/or more AC a beaded purse of human teeth
or too precise? A German pretzel.
All of our matches are about ghosts or falling
friendless bouncing back
a clear umbrella blacker comedy.
In the mirror I watch me think
on the train I am invaded
ask you to turn me over
steer clear of closing legs.
He led me to a bad world
of auto-body shops
dead priests and Victorian luck
but I wasn’t in the mood
for the clear corpse of finality
too many clocks and headscarves
would have/should have moons—
Jessie Janeshek's second full-length book of poems, The Shaky Phase, is forthcoming from Stalking Horse Press. Her chapbooks are Spanish Donkey/Pear of Anguish (Grey Book Press, 2016), Rah-Rah Nostalgia (dancing girl press, 2016), and Hardscape (Reality Beach, forthcoming, 2017). Invisible Mink (Iris Press, 2010) is her first full-length collection.