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MY HABITS ARE BAD                        I don’t know what’s at the wheel
                 sleeping long days              dreaming dead deer
                                      or deer horns or nothing.
Alive alive-o                                            forms a good number
                 crumbling old letters        feast or fiesta
but this blue candle         does not smell like fall
                                      and I can’t tell if the groan
                                  is my home or an animal
or why I am walking this ice storm alone
                 devil gloves and pink puffballs
                                                                    the starlet zone code
                 in a world without love when this could be Hollywood.

                 The fine-fingered winged girls
black lips/silent o’s
                 but I don’t have enough time between assaults
to let my hair grow back natural
                 so I find icy playboys
the ways their lips tingle with scotch
                 give the white high heels another shot
                                  vow I’ll be productive
drink less or more             little sips     vow I’d be better
                                      off in lands of moors
                 since I can’t stand your voices.

                 Introductions are worthless
you know my winged liner
                 another faux fur  and this is the dusk
through which I tote a glass lantern
                 through money and glitter
and Mari Lywd gloaming
                 and there’s not enough coffee
to mix with the liquor        before we jump in the roadster
                 or the river.

In the film I’m the dead aunt
                 and the contemporary ghost of myself
too afraid to move and I’m afraid I’ll lose
                                      men, cigarettes or electricity
                                                                    my cologne smells like moss
                                      and I’ll find places to hang
                 my photos of Jean Harlow’s graves
                                      and we’ll meet in the bathroom
                                      and fuck in our bathrobes
                 as the topcoat smooths everything.

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JESSIE  JANESHEK‘s second full-length book of poems is The Shaky Phase (Stalking Horse Press). Her chapbooks are Spanish Donkey/Pear of Anguish (Grey Book Press, 2016), Rah-Rah Nostalgia, (dancing girl press, 2016), Supernoir (Grey Book Press, 2017), Auto-Harlow (Shirt Pocket Press, 2018), and Hardscape (Reality Beach, forthcoming). Invisible Mink (Iris Press, 2010) is her first full-length collection. You can read more of her poetry at jessiejaneshek.net.