JESSIE JANESHEK
Image by Leah Sophia Dworkin
Design for Living/Vanitas
There’s a certain kind of humming I cannot understand.
I can’t stand your lives I can’t clear my head
I don’t know what could hold me together
tubercular beauty a black dahlia mugshot
soggy theosophy intense masturbation
to stay in bed watching gangster movies
despite or in spite of the lengthening days?
I try to read waves draw the girl as a baby
swimming inside me edging myself an unfortunate caricature
in this art deco bedroom static on the pink phone
and this is plot progress a husband or killer
hidden in the French elevator or where do we go
blow the rabbits’ nest up walk alone with the blade?
Or I grew up with bad hair and small dinners convincing
everyone I was dim an invalid who communed
with the fairies, their lengthy, leathery wings
because if it’s a photograph it has to be real
and then we upgraded to an iron lung with mirror
a view of the treehouse
no ribs sticking out here
and we met in a forest fire (I’d crawled out of the lung)
and you said to leave the rabbits alone
they’ll grow up quick in a couple of weeks we’ll be crying
nest full of blood
and theosophy was a side piece like a cake we didn’t need
filtered through the tree and the prophecy
the difference being at least I tried to get it
and on the path to enlightenment
the wind caught my crinoline
threw me into the sea
or on a humid night in Mississippi
Jayne Mansfield’s head popped off
or that was also a fiction
or—I’ll forgive you your trespasses--
another stab at religion.
Note: Design for Living is the title of a 1933 film.
I can’t stand your lives I can’t clear my head
I don’t know what could hold me together
tubercular beauty a black dahlia mugshot
soggy theosophy intense masturbation
to stay in bed watching gangster movies
despite or in spite of the lengthening days?
I try to read waves draw the girl as a baby
swimming inside me edging myself an unfortunate caricature
in this art deco bedroom static on the pink phone
and this is plot progress a husband or killer
hidden in the French elevator or where do we go
blow the rabbits’ nest up walk alone with the blade?
Or I grew up with bad hair and small dinners convincing
everyone I was dim an invalid who communed
with the fairies, their lengthy, leathery wings
because if it’s a photograph it has to be real
and then we upgraded to an iron lung with mirror
a view of the treehouse
no ribs sticking out here
and we met in a forest fire (I’d crawled out of the lung)
and you said to leave the rabbits alone
they’ll grow up quick in a couple of weeks we’ll be crying
nest full of blood
and theosophy was a side piece like a cake we didn’t need
filtered through the tree and the prophecy
the difference being at least I tried to get it
and on the path to enlightenment
the wind caught my crinoline
threw me into the sea
or on a humid night in Mississippi
Jayne Mansfield’s head popped off
or that was also a fiction
or—I’ll forgive you your trespasses--
another stab at religion.
Note: Design for Living is the title of a 1933 film.
Red Dust Gunshot
The smell is half sex
waiting in Soccoro with my wet thighs
and my powdery hair
and a ceramic cactus on the roadside
heavy lids/heavy limits
or you write to find yourself
on the road to California
bald limbs/bad lids
pretend you’re Vantine too dumbstruck to clean
peering around the corner.
Curls barely move above the monsoon
the saint’s candle makes me envy
it doesn’t not motivate
the calendar girl doesn’t save me a pain.
The smell is half fish a ridiculous epic
kidney-shaped failings behind pink damask drapes.
I don’t know about anything
when you run out of money to keep freezing your capsule
when you masturbate so much you run out of wrist.
Vantine started scraping the cage
the hot smell of piss a soft font
a dive bomb not even a bridesmaid.
It’s all peace and capsule watching her rump
bones so boozy you smash up again.
They made us a jungle in the backlot, Culver City.
Everything after her death was our afterlife.
The Hollywood sign shone like ice.
Note: Red Dust is the title of a 1932 film starring Jean Harlow as Vantine.
waiting in Soccoro with my wet thighs
and my powdery hair
and a ceramic cactus on the roadside
heavy lids/heavy limits
or you write to find yourself
on the road to California
bald limbs/bad lids
pretend you’re Vantine too dumbstruck to clean
peering around the corner.
Curls barely move above the monsoon
the saint’s candle makes me envy
it doesn’t not motivate
the calendar girl doesn’t save me a pain.
The smell is half fish a ridiculous epic
kidney-shaped failings behind pink damask drapes.
I don’t know about anything
when you run out of money to keep freezing your capsule
when you masturbate so much you run out of wrist.
Vantine started scraping the cage
the hot smell of piss a soft font
a dive bomb not even a bridesmaid.
It’s all peace and capsule watching her rump
bones so boozy you smash up again.
They made us a jungle in the backlot, Culver City.
Everything after her death was our afterlife.
The Hollywood sign shone like ice.
Note: Red Dust is the title of a 1932 film starring Jean Harlow as Vantine.
Star '80 Planchette
Exeunt mortality personality sentimentality
the little girl left behind in her coffin
no color left in her hair candy floss
and the sheer fact she was desultory
posing naked while everyone moved.
Justice judging with difference, the draw
or justice judging at Palm Springs atomic
with aqua blue radios shining in eye walls
or justice judging by freezing her body.
The unicorn is in memorium the smell of a gunshot
memorizing a horoscope
to be astral in hell.
You can live down a scandal if you want to
you can work in a slaughterhouse
come out in a pink skirt and rollerskates
sadness in your gut Harlow’s death like a gat
the set became quiet.
I don’t want to foster your mourning
horizon and the pressure of bathing in a rain barrel
or a coffin or a rotten Venice Beach gondola.
You beg me to come fix your degenerate landscape
but you’d better eat the fish while it still has a fever
you’d better swallow a lock of my hair
you’d better get your nose butchered to look like me
outside melodrama
and burning inside the genie-shaped bottle
the muscle contractions
we used to call sex
next to the bondage machine.
Note: Star ’80 is the title of a 1983 film about the life and death of Dorothy Stratten.
the little girl left behind in her coffin
no color left in her hair candy floss
and the sheer fact she was desultory
posing naked while everyone moved.
Justice judging with difference, the draw
or justice judging at Palm Springs atomic
with aqua blue radios shining in eye walls
or justice judging by freezing her body.
The unicorn is in memorium the smell of a gunshot
memorizing a horoscope
to be astral in hell.
You can live down a scandal if you want to
you can work in a slaughterhouse
come out in a pink skirt and rollerskates
sadness in your gut Harlow’s death like a gat
the set became quiet.
I don’t want to foster your mourning
horizon and the pressure of bathing in a rain barrel
or a coffin or a rotten Venice Beach gondola.
You beg me to come fix your degenerate landscape
but you’d better eat the fish while it still has a fever
you’d better swallow a lock of my hair
you’d better get your nose butchered to look like me
outside melodrama
and burning inside the genie-shaped bottle
the muscle contractions
we used to call sex
next to the bondage machine.
Note: Star ’80 is the title of a 1983 film about the life and death of Dorothy Stratten.
Monroe Planchette
Look in the coffin window
so much glam so much sadness
see the little girl’s face (thick cheeks)
perfectly preserved and I just need a way
to disappear into Venice
let go the stripes of time, a tight blue skirt, my mother
a lacy paper gondola.
I could haunt Hotel Ocean.
They gave her a fake name because no other bodies
left behind looked the same.
The first It Girl felt the mercury
shimmer on her tonsils
the little girls’ dead cheek like a cloud
like how do you handle
the loss of red lipstick and brains
black cat lanterns an airplane body
and how do you handle starting out late
a Harlow sans the wink story so heavy
the script rewriting each night
a red-heart altar to Harlean
and men don’t make passes at addicts
and I spend money on Pucci
don’t ask for forgiveness
wiping my lips
but I know the perfect way
to highlight my own face.
so much glam so much sadness
see the little girl’s face (thick cheeks)
perfectly preserved and I just need a way
to disappear into Venice
let go the stripes of time, a tight blue skirt, my mother
a lacy paper gondola.
I could haunt Hotel Ocean.
They gave her a fake name because no other bodies
left behind looked the same.
The first It Girl felt the mercury
shimmer on her tonsils
the little girls’ dead cheek like a cloud
like how do you handle
the loss of red lipstick and brains
black cat lanterns an airplane body
and how do you handle starting out late
a Harlow sans the wink story so heavy
the script rewriting each night
a red-heart altar to Harlean
and men don’t make passes at addicts
and I spend money on Pucci
don’t ask for forgiveness
wiping my lips
but I know the perfect way
to highlight my own face.
Did She Go to Hell? Yes, and They Called It Hollywood
It’s love I’m after or monkey business
or this river on the floodplain
but I think I’ve found my ghost.
She’s getting drunk on this last day
she says I smoke too much
she says I am bankable I better behave
but am I tough enough?
She’s the last of the It girls
and she is small enough to slide through
the rails of her sickbed.
This town, houses hollow
too close together
pink triptychs pink tricycles parking outside
and on the sidewalks rusted hairpins
my blood-stained Draculette cape.
I killed Rita Hayworth she felt too frothy.
Was it Carole Lombard
or Constance Bennett
in the scene of the scarred factory mirror?
It’s too hot in here for the longlegged deer
but I asked her how
I sucked down all the vodka.
I did not light a candle
but I did ask her how
I sucked down that Halloween sunset
before the ghost I found
turned into a bat.
Suddenly I’m vomiting
all over the cornfields
suddenly I’m shedding
all my extra weight in your cornfield
but aren’t we all equally talented?
Suddenly I’m pissing in my white jewel-toned nightie
behind all spooky pines
missing when late-night TV
was like another universe
color-changing arsenic shrinking my waist
madcap and darkness
the blue-black route a dead rooster
you flip me over
and fuck me how we hide from police--
Note: The title is a photo caption from the book Movie Star by Ethan Mordden.
or this river on the floodplain
but I think I’ve found my ghost.
She’s getting drunk on this last day
she says I smoke too much
she says I am bankable I better behave
but am I tough enough?
She’s the last of the It girls
and she is small enough to slide through
the rails of her sickbed.
This town, houses hollow
too close together
pink triptychs pink tricycles parking outside
and on the sidewalks rusted hairpins
my blood-stained Draculette cape.
I killed Rita Hayworth she felt too frothy.
Was it Carole Lombard
or Constance Bennett
in the scene of the scarred factory mirror?
It’s too hot in here for the longlegged deer
but I asked her how
I sucked down all the vodka.
I did not light a candle
but I did ask her how
I sucked down that Halloween sunset
before the ghost I found
turned into a bat.
Suddenly I’m vomiting
all over the cornfields
suddenly I’m shedding
all my extra weight in your cornfield
but aren’t we all equally talented?
Suddenly I’m pissing in my white jewel-toned nightie
behind all spooky pines
missing when late-night TV
was like another universe
color-changing arsenic shrinking my waist
madcap and darkness
the blue-black route a dead rooster
you flip me over
and fuck me how we hide from police--
Note: The title is a photo caption from the book Movie Star by Ethan Mordden.
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.