Gallows Humour, Recall, &, This Homestead Is Burning by Jane Feinsod
Gallows Humour
But if you want the wasteland so badly,
you can have a room at the casino.
You can stay for six hundred years;
just remember to wave your handkerchief
when the boats leave the harbor.
For greener pastures, or for vampirism.
I want rumors in the shape of places.
Hearsay goes down easier than
the cardsharps sold it, with its aftertaste
of roulette, barbiturates, olives.
This place still reminds me of the floor
falling through the ballroom. I’m sorry
that the blood bank is all out of soda cans
and donations to the charity of your choice.
There’s no window in this room but
I can hear the boats leaving port.
On sand and on water, no more
jackpots, no more apple martinis.
Just a bag of blood for the road.
But I want the wasteland,
where there’s no chance
of drowning.
In the wasteland
I can say
anything
I want.
In the wasteland
I can pivot,
or worse—
Recall
Flicked wrist, composure not unlike
a dog with too many legs, a bark that scratches
at the door but doesn’t leave the mouth.
Recounting towards my direction
about silky curtains, a failed marriage,
and a butcher’s knife. All I ask is that
you dare me. And give me
your cassette tapes, that recording
of a cannon ball, eclipsing or opening.
After we’ve finished our business with the car crash,
it’ll be a trip into Kennecott, it’ll be leaving money
in a mining cart. Stealing relics. Burning down
company towns. Hands on throats.
Come to the marshlands. No copper,
but there is sour. I could build you
a crater, fill it with playing cards and
photographs of Alaska and Plascassier.
This is not dangerous. This is a note scratched into
the side of a matchbox. There are only so many words,
but I’d recall winter and its bite and I can collapse,
into a fire named anything, a hearth, a mine;
this is not dangerous. This is sorcery, evocation.
This Homestead Is Burning
This homestead is burning and I
blame Mother. She just couldn’t
leave well enough alone. I’m well
enough alone. She’s so much
of a person. I’m shaking off skin.
She’s so much of a person, she cuts
herself on spurs and she can’t hunt.
She’s so much of a person,
she has to be at fault for the fire.
I’m afraid I’m not so unlike Mother.
I, too, can’t be bothered.
Instead, I live on a chaise longue.
I wait for sap to fall into my mouth.
I eat tomatoes from her garden.
So I’m not fetching the sheriff.
I’m not looking for water.
I’m not at fault.
I didn’t start it.
I’m not getting up.
I made Mother cut my hair
so I’d look less like her.
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