Jessie Janeshek‘s poetry hums like a death rattle, haunts like hocus pocus, and dances like a pagan priestess. Check out “This Is the Shaky Phase” below, and if you dig that, you can read four more of Jessie’s poems in our Fall 2014 Issue, now on sale for $3US.

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I MAKE CRISES IN MY MOUTH
    harrowing the cat mask
 
lie down on the table
    jawing contemplate.

 
So you left him in the garden
                or maybe in a hot car.
    He could only come in rain
    jangling sharks’ teeth in my face.

Tomorrow I’ll leave hungry
    rummaging for arrows
    polka dot my toenails                        red under duress.

 
The pink velour is nothing
            but a snakecharm
            or a smokescreen.

                        Take the mask back off
                        bat wings at the window flapping thick
                        at the bright slam of the gate
                        my shadow’s chicken-shaped.

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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).