Jessie Janeshek‘s transgressive yet playful style is in full effect in “Ode to Joy,” one of 5 poems she contributed to our Fall 2014 issue.

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IT’S DISINGENUOUS
to sleep through the day
when you’re riding a lamb-headed
totem through fireworks
scratching morality plays in the dirt.

So I eat the mercury
hang from black rings
beg you to circle my ankles in duct tape
bludgeon the megrim from me
with a jumprobe.

                            Whose hand slinks up
                            the cat puppet’s back
                            mouths my desire’s
                            too greedy, taboo?

                            Who shaves me bald as a child on the table
                            spreads my legs in the loft
                            satyrs my crotch full of sawdust
                            as you jerk the ladder away?

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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).