by Christine Sloan Stoddard
What’s the Fever, Big Star?
So much pressure, a plunder, it just keeps adding up.
He says time is circular
but I don’t get time I keep falling and failing
same publicity stunt
I spend all my time in the basement
trying to get a screw loose
or I spend all my time in my ghost car
on the bridge with a mini-stroke of my dreams
wondering if that’s the north star
or the result of my accident, please.
He says if you weren’t trapped your writing would change
graphic eyeliner gratified Poconos honeymoon phase
but I spend all my time in brogues
refusing to walk in the wet
crow a song every other day
the black lips, the incest, the chocolates
the blonde waves, the white negligee.
I drink the two-day-old coffee with scotch
I watch the snake-coffin scene
or I watch the weepy when it should be zany
not quite bone clean.
He said you’re just in a mood
you’re playing a scene with yourself
the 8-ball is concentrate
the Palm Springs cactus an omen, a saint.
Little Ways to Know This Made Sense at the Time
More rain or it’s the case of not letting summer taste you
but if it were me I would keep crying
one bird, one stone, a quiet storm yin-yang
or a fly in this heart-shaped two-by-two movie
where mushrooms grow quick on my candle-print dress.
If it were me I would sit on the pink couch
where pillows are seashells
my dead sister in daisies with larvae or fleas
but I don’t give myself time
for the noir introduction or I make up the sister
with a plastic clock in the treehouse
or a broken wrist in the river rock trying to run from the rapist
run from the ritz or the watchdog, it’s money
of my own making
and another bad man is pounding the steering wheel
letting lightning fly and I’m in my bathing suit
on my strawberry skates and up the street
an ambulance starts and stops at some July Xmas lights
and you can’t escape bacteria and you can’t snag a man
and this scene is familiar
but you can snag a man if you keep your past in the past
and I can’t wait for the scene leading up to the dinner
where I make a wish on the enchanted statue
where he shoves me so hard feathers drop off my robe
where if your lover’s a suicide come and forget
pretend you never knew him
keep doing your makeup dark lips and placid publicity
or lucidity since no one’s dragging you to the graveyard.
Jessie Janeshek‘s full-length collections are MADCAP (Stalking Horse Press, 2019), The Shaky Phase (Stalking Horse Press, 2017), and Invisible Mink (Iris Press, 2010). Her chapbooks include 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 Channel U (Grey Book Press, 2020). Read more at jessiejaneshek.net.
Christine Sloan Stoddard is a Salvadoran-American author and interdisciplinary artist who lives in Brooklyn. Her books include Force Fed, Desert Fox by the Sea, Belladonna Magic, Water for the Cactus Woman, and other titles. She co-edited Her Plumage: An Anthology of Women’s Writings by Quail Bell Magazine for Quail Bell, the art and literary journal she founded. In 2019, she became the first-ever artist-in-residence at Lenox Hill Neighborhood House and earned her MFA from The City College of New York in Manhattan. Later that year, Christine became the artist-in-residence at Heartshare Human Services of New York, where she leads art workshops for adults with disabilities and creates artwork for display. Continuing in the direction of her poetry films like Jaguar in the Cotton Field, Done, and Marine Encounters, Christine has been selected to collaborate with poet Teri Elam for the 2020 Visible Poetry Project. 2020 will mark the release of Christine’s books Naomi & the Reckoning (Finishing Line Press) and Heaven Is A Photograph (CLASH Books).