Jessie Janeshek‘s magical and mischievous “Red Hair, Red Venison, Brown Summer Sun” is merely one of four poems she contributed to our Summer 2015 issue, currently orderable online via Amazon and Createspace. Copies are also on sale at independent brick-and-mortar stores like Bluestockings and St. Mark’s Bookshop.

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WE’RE A FOX FOR ALL SEASONS             eat bonbons like bad pigs
      cry every rain for the bones of an idol
          the colts of an emblem
      the house-cat shaped hole in the tree.

We wake sick once a month   eat dried baby’s breath
      vomit hinges and hexes        track our black sex on money               since worms are inside.

All signs point to yes, unsympathetic.
      We spray piss, make it coarse
      since it’s not crime if it’s habit
            and we’re the white horse
      the slim beehived bride in the iron lung
      still watching          Dark Shadows
      in retrospect.

Author’s Acknowledgment: The phrase “the bones of an idol” is the title of a song by The New Pornographers.

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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).