That glisten you see on our face is only partly perspiration from the summer heat; it’s mostly from the joy we feel that we once again have the chance to share some wickedly spellbinding poetry by Jessie Janeshek. “Summertime’s the Time for Torture / Time for Torture’s Summertime” is just one of four poems she contributed to our Summer 2015 issue, currently orderable online via Amazon and Createspace. Or, if you live in the New York City area, you can pick up copies at independent brick-and-mortar stores like Bluestockings and St. Mark’s Bookshop.

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TAKE PLEASURE IN HUNGER
    these fat summer nights
          stretched out over Owl Lunch.

We’re glass figurines. We use autocorrect
      to tell fortunes, the glut.
Theft gives us pleasure, everyone drugged
mornings no better, slow monsters.

 
Is this a coffin or is it your bedroom?
          We box your left hand
          tie it with black ribbons.
Your doll has an orange topknot
          her period clear, totipotent.

      The computer’s delighted we’re members
      but the world stops when we leave
      the lipstick’s cap off.

Author’s acknowledgment: The phrase “slow monsters” is from a poem by one of my students, Julie Bromyard.

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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).