the destroyer > text > Jessie Janeshek
THREE POEMS
You’ll be Leonora, the torso on the woodline
twinkling when I honeycomb your hands
press bloodsuckers to your buttocks.
Limbs twist from the poplars
over mustard gas, philosophy
the bagworms’ flossy nest.
Blacksnakes twine your legs
and my bike chain smashes pentagrams
across the links where Leonora
lost her head. I rev the El Camino
with our chest of bees in back
tremble when you thrust my faith away.
the well-dressed man butchers
a god or a rabbit. Holly cries cyclone
afraid of dilaudid, mildew, good blood.
You pull on mom’s nightie
stuff me in the truck cab
let the red Chevy stick in the mud.
The weird blade of the new
turns on its spit
in front of your highbeams.
I dare you to fuck me
since each dog has her habit.
I promise to chug grenadine
piss on hogsheads when you come.
I catalogue snakeskins, trust you to divine
I’m high in the barn under old tires.
My father burnt fishlivers months before this.
My father stuck seeds with his blood onto miniature chainsaws.
He strings the hard purple carnival bear
from the wire, lets you wear both halves
of his porcelain arrow.
Gasoline eats a hole in the creekbed
as the seven-foot styrofoam Christ’s head floats by.
I burrow in dreams of the pines where we sang
the pledge of allegiance. You’ll come back in two weeks
when the dust is auspicious, when the mutt’s muscles
fill the arthropod’s place. You’ll ask about me.
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