Jayne PUPEK

Pink Confetti


Go on, be bold. Pray
for something obscene,
a woman with a red, swollen
vulva, her innards oily,
dark as roasted duck.

The colored eggs we didn't find
feed spring crows. All the birds are thin
from winter's insistence on snow.
Who knew what it meant to starve?
In Florida, a brain-dead woman
lasted fourteen days
without her feeding tube.
Our daily bread grows mold
and yet you utter demands.

Wishes are for birthday cakes.
Blow out your candles, Isabelle.
The year begins with spread legs.
When the pinata breaks, down falls
genitalia and pink confetti.







Small Talk on Tuesdays


I am full of venom and spit. Pray for me,
but don't barter or take a hostage.

Move your fingers over me the way you would
a stone, a rosary bead, a thick veined cock.
Mock the sinner, mock the whore. Imprison no one.

I hid a dollar in my bra. A lace-paper fuck
takes place in my cleavage.
Today is a shameful excuse for tomorrow.

I baptize myself with stale Cheerios and piss.
Motives revealed don't change the facts.
Prick your finger, watch yourself bleed.

It is no easy thing to want what you have.
The craving to add is a sad addiction.

Stains remind me where I've been. I'm grateful.






The Yard Sale


The front lawn is a war zone of scratched furniture
and plastic birds. Nearby, a greyhound
masturbates on the birch. I smell the bark peeling,
make a note to whitewash the trunk
in the morning. Next door, the radio blares. Music,
foreign and obscene. Andy Williams lives in Cairo.
Can't Take My Eyes Off You...
...Oh pretty baby....

Perhaps the dog has fleas. Summers on the farm,
gnats swarmed the cocks of Papa's dogs.
Later, those same gnats gathered like sinners
at my skinned knees. When I let them feast
on my blood, I didn't know if I'd redeemed them
or if I'd consorted with dogs.

This much is clear: yard sales are illegal in upscale communities.
Everywhere, possession is nine-tenths of the law,
which technically means my ex should have kept this junk.
Still, I'm a good soldier, albeit a reticent recruit.
I'll face the sun, the crooning, and the promiscuous dog
if by the end of the day, those pink flamingoes are gone.







Apple Seeds


Split the apple in half, expose fleshy core soft
as a baby's palate. All that's left: a few dark seeds.

Today in a nearby town a man beat his seven week old son.
The attending physician counted eight broken ribs
and a row of half-moon marks shaped like human teeth.

I wean myself from lovers by sucking stones.
Just once, I wish the polished discs would break,
fill my mouth with colors instead of incantations

If a homeless man asked to sleep in your garage,
would you let him? If you let him, would your husband
sleep on the couch? Would you sleep at all?

Two girls from my high school went into the bathroom.
One came out bleeding between their thighs.

A drowned girl turns the most ethereal shade of blue.
You're almost sorry you held her head under so long.







Underground


What lives below the surface does not
long for light, but tunnels like a mole
towards the core of past mistakes. Figures
linger outside the bar next door, casting distorted
shadows across the floor of my basement
apartment where I quarrel with men who come
uninvited to my bed. They smoke my last
cigarettes and practice pick-up lines
in the circular mirror. I claim
only the grounds in my coffee pot,
torn stockings, and rain
pelting my window with insults, dirty talk.
When the skies clear, I gather
paper umbrellas hoarded all these years
and pass them out among subway riders
who burrow underground
believing all the while in light.






Night Skies


Once with you in Mexico, I drank
sangria on the clay verandah and rehearsed
currency, forgetting how many pesos
make a dollar. Overhead,
the night sky filled with birds, their wings
dress patterns that obliterated stars and scissor-cut
the moon, dividing light into Orion's milky tears.

Here, weeks later, doves and sparrows
nest high in pines or low in the lilac bush
beneath the bedroom window, propped open
with a rainstick we bought from a shaman who carved
notches into the wood, one for each year we'd been married.
I cut my own notches inside, where no one can count,
a mark for each day you've been gone.

Around my shoulders, your sweater
moth-chewed and tinged with the bitter sex
of cigarettes and perspiration. Tonight's skies
are starry and vacant and full of holes.




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