Professor Bitch

I am not a lucrative person.
In 1996, at Enterprise City, the kids
got job titles: banker, business owner,
marketing director. Me, I was t-shirt maker.
I stood alone in a closet feeding cotton
to lasers. What I can’t tell is how
each of my loves is a reaction to the last:
daisy-chain of cruelty and false kindness.
Under my bed I used to keep a Mega Bruiser
Jumbo Jawbreaker and lick down a layer
when everyone else was asleep.
Beneath the chalky splatter-paint coat:
a planet of color, magic eye inside.
At work I suit up in my blazer and the guy
in back slams shut his textbook
to ask me if I’ve ever heard of T. S. Eliot.
I like the feel of a t-shirt that swallows.
I like to hold no one too close.
Almost yearning, my friend says, raising her wine.
Finally I decide to get down to the heart.

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Jenny Molberg is the author of the collections Marvels of the Invisible (winner of the Berkshire Prize, Tupelo Press, 2017), Refusal (LSU Press, 2020), and The Court of No Record (forthcoming from LSU Press, 2023). She has received support from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Sewanee Writers Conference, Vermont Studio Center, and the Longleaf Writers Conference. Her work has recently appeared or is forthcoming in Ploughshares, West Branch, The Missouri Review, The Rumpus, The Adroit Journal, Oprah Quarterly, and other publications. She is Associate Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Central Missouri, where she directs Pleiades Press and co-edits Pleiades magazine. Find her online at jennymolberg.com or on Twitter at @jennymolberg.