Jessie Janeshek

"Nessie Sushi" by Alexandra Beguez

I'm Best When Juxtaposing My Neuroses
       w/ Paint-by-Number Woodcuts of Saints

I draft them at night                                so pissed and so vapid
    can’t take the excitement

and sometimes I plush                            I sweatstain out loud
             and the furry man calls             to us from his trailer

you look like a chair          back in the car
                           small but prophetic.

I ask him to plumb    a pink tulle wound dressing
the creak in the false hip      mouth-blind on the lake

then I make a poem                              of your dead body
         my waxworks                            your stubble.

I ask what’s the detour when things are this fragile?
            then enemies calm    and your torture forms bloom

and I squint since it’s harder
      to stay on the wheel.

I feed off leather
      and my faith is my faith

is my faith
     is red drum skins

and I mix my blood
       with yours to stay warm.

JESSIE JANESHEK's full-length poetry collection is Invisible Mink (Iris Press, 2010). Her chapbook Rah-Rah Nostalgia is forthcoming from dancing girl press. An Assistant Professor of English and Director of Writing at Bethany College, she holds a Ph.D. from the University of Tennessee-Knoxville and an M.F.A. from Emerson College. You can read more at jessiejaneshek.net.

ALEXANDRA BEGUEZ is an illustrator, cartoonist and mythographer based in New Jersey. She has a love for bright colors, science fiction, hoofed beasts, potatoes and cautionary tales. Her comics and illustrations appear in Little Nemo: Dream Another Dream, Quarter Moon, Ink Brick and Carboncito. She has received an Honorable Mention from the Society of Illustrators of Los Angeles Illustration West 53 and a 2014 MoCCA Arts Festival Award of Excellence, as well as having work featured in the Society of Illustrators 2015 Comic and Cartoon Annual. Recently, her work was chosen to be included on Latin American Ilustración 4’s online collection, The ARCHIVE. She is currently enrolled in the MFA Visual Narrative program at the School of Visual Arts.