“The Flesh the Grave Cave Ate, Volume One” is one of five marvelous & mystical poems that Jessie Janeshek contributed to our Summer 2016 issue. To read all five, help yourself to a copy of FLAPPERHOUSE X!

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I DON’T WANT YOUR GLASS BONG                     your glowing pills
                    amber-coated costumes
the blue fluff of decadent saints                in the wood-paneled retrograde

the littering bodies under blonde signs
the blow jobs at the playground               so desperate I’m sloppy.

Something must be out there
                    a bare ass                a baldness                        a god moving in
I try to determine why to keep going

                the broken ghost at the pier mimicking tenderness
beyond night and orange cages and sleepy babies.

I have become               a black-lipped wax monster
                sustaining my fuck-ups         red coat pockets stuffed with plague spices

and the abominable thing is she wants my mineral thunderstorms
my finger-print high heels                      my tattooed value judgments

                                                        and summer descends like an alien ship
                                                        since I wear a striped bra           and an inflatable cock
                                                        under my witch cheerleader costume.

Note: “The flesh the grave cave ate” is a phrase from Sylvia Plath’s poem “Lady Lazarus.”

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JESSIE JANESHEK’s chapbooks are Spanish Donkey/Pear of Anguish (Grey Book Press), Rah-Rah Nostalgia (dancing girl press, 2016), and Hardscape (Reality Beach, forthcoming, 2017). Her full-length collection 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). You can read more of her poetry at jessiejaneshek.net.