“Bombshell / Laughter Slaughter” is one of four fantastically flappy poems by FLAPPERHOUSE’s poet laureate, Jessie Janeshek, in our Winter 2019 issue.

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I’M GIVING UP BEING SAD ABOUT TIME
                over it, over it.
I lie in this game and hem-stitch my waste
                launch paper ships
never realize the fizz      stringy meat      rusty keys
                stow my dress in the basket
nipple ice and no slip     the contrast is stunning.
                I lie nude in the sun      dogshit on the snow
the consolatory song of corpse in the morgue at my feet
                how she slumped on her steering wheel
knocked her gold tooth loose
                the death of the party.

I never believed platinum days could end in olive oil baldness
                two months of ooze. I didn’t need mystery
the black and white dots            or The Girl from Missouri
                nothing left but a fish kiss
and my pants don’t fit
                and it’s ok that my weakness is brilliance
I’m just acting whatever you say
                I’m already set to die in this bedroom
eleven phases of white       chokecherry stage
                I was rotting long before Hollywood
a cheaply-cut sapphire       barmaid singing in stripes
                following men with pool cues down to the tornado shelter
eating raw steaks and making them gangsters
                weeping trees, houseflies poetic.

And I was the sunflower             brownette drinking gin
                with that old-fashioned death in my chest
my body barely holding together
                my blood and piss flooding the plains
and they ghostwrote this story but I’m over that too
                I’d swear anytime it was mine.

Note: This poem very loosely uses the life and death of Jean Harlow.

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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. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of Tennessee-Knoxville and an M.F.A. from Emerson College. You can read more of her poetry at jessiejaneshek.net.