by Jennifer Jean

It's #tbt! Enjoy this great one from SWWIM Every Day's archives!

______________________________________________________________________

the whole interview’s about her girl.

D says, I wanted her to know
but know my way,

not at school or from some jerk.
So one day I say, “We should talk,” & she’s freaked.

We sit down in the kitchen &
she starts crying. (So I’m thinking, She knows…)

“You got Cancer!
You got Cancer!” she starts screaming.

D snorts, We laugh about it now.

How she was so relieved
I wasn’t
dying.

*

Others in town talk
about D’s son

finding her nude online, or
fellow yacht-clubbers finding her & showing him
her webcam antics, her customer ratings
on her “Escort” ads.

My son was bound,
says D,
to notice

my overnight bag. I stuffed it
with lingerie.
I mean—
jeez…

she shrugs.

There’s a bit of dead
air for the boy, then
he’s gone

from the interview.

*

D scans the Starbucks
where we perch on stools. Says she’s failed
the bar exam a lot, her ex is a nerd, that she wants another degree
& to write a memoir,
But I’m so exhausted!

Then it’s back to her girl, When I take my girl
on errands, I point out

all the jerks in town who’re clients &
we laugh. An orgasm
is like a pedicure for these guys.
I mean—jeez…

Who does that?

she shakes out her long, frosted hair. She’s fifty-three
so she’s got some grey
but it looks classy.

I wonder if she’ll start pointing.

*

Instead, D looks back at me, One time we saw

this big ass politico I’ve known for years
slurping pancakes with his wife, at IHOP.

She says his name
& I’m ready to stop the recorder.
Too funny, she sighs. She’s so

far away she squints
at me, says, My girl’s cool. I nod.
We talk about all our guys.
It’s all good.

*

Just wish there wasn’t

side effects.
She leans away but we’re closer now—like mother,
like daughter. & the monied men in Starbucks seem to be
closing in as the place crowds, but

I’m hooked. Side effects?

I feel nothing. Like that song!
After nine years of this, she sings, I feel nothing
nothing nothing at all…

______________________________________________________________________

Jennifer Jean's poetry collections are VOZ, The Fool, and Object Lesson, which explores sex-trafficking and objectification in America. She's also released the teaching resource Object Lesson: a Guide to Writing Poetry. Her poetry, prose, and co-translations have appeared in Poetry Magazine, Rattle, The Common, On the Seawall, The Los Angeles Review, and as an Academy of American Poets “Poem-a-Day.” She's been awarded fellowships from the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop, Disquiet/Dzanc Books, the Massachusetts Cultural Council, and the Kolkata International Poetry Festival; as well, she received an Ambassador for Peace Award from the Women's Federation for World Peace. Jennifer is the senior program manager of 24PearlStreet, the Fine Arts Work Center's online writing program.

by Jennifer Jean

Rain blessed the county this year
& the Los Angeles River
flushed out nearly 13,000 pounds of
mattresses, carts, turpentine,
steak knives, bottle caps, opioids,
& bald, eyeless doll heads
onto shorelines as far as Seal’s Beach.
All that the Valley had chucked was laid bare,
was picked through by a volunteer Cleanup
Brigade—like readers parsing a gnarl
of poems. Even primordial Styrofoam
from my decades-old Walkman box
was exposed—the dirt over the white
had finally eroded. Even this piece of former me

mingled with the rush, the beached.
Then—Jim on the crew
stabbed & stuffed it into an orange bin,
fed the full bin to mealworms.
Then—some county hand
fed that toxin-less feedstock to fowl,
to farmed fish. Oh! I remember hurling it
from mom’s Nova—at her live-in boyfriend
invasion: at Mustache Tony & Butch,
at the young guy I worked with at Home Depot
& Red-Head smiles, at Old Cowdude
& Pathological Paul. & when Pathological
Paul moved out—a rush of tears
blessed my face & began to dislodge them all.

______________________________________________________________

Jennifer Jean's poetry collections include Object Lesson (Lily Books) and The Fool (Big Table). She's also released the teaching resource Object Lesson: A Guide to Writing Poetry (Lily Books). Her poetry, prose, and co-translations have appeared in POETRY Magazine, Waxwing Journal, Rattle Magazine, Crab Creek Review, DMQ Review, On the Seawall, Salamander, The Common, and more. She's been awarded a Peter Taylor Fellowship from the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop, a Disquiet FLAD Fellowship from Dzanc Books, and an Ambassador for Peace Award from the Women's Federation for World Peace. As well, she is the translations editor at Talking Writing, a consulting editor at the Kenyon Review, and a co-translator of Arabic poetry and organizer for the Her Story Is collective. Jennifer is the new Manager of 24PearlStreet, the Fine Arts Work Center's Online Writing Program.

by Jennifer Jean

the whole interview’s about her girl.

D says, I wanted her to know
but know my way,

not at school or from some jerk.
So one day I say, “We should talk,” & she’s freaked.

We sit down in the kitchen &
she starts crying. (So I’m thinking, She knows…)

“You got Cancer!
You got Cancer!” she starts screaming.
D snorts, We laugh about it now.
How she was so relieved
I wasn’t
dying.
*

Others in town talk
about D’s son

finding her nude online, or
fellow yacht-clubbers finding her & showing him
her webcam antics, her customer ratings
on her “Escort” ads.

My son was bound,says D, 
to notice

my overnight bag. I stuffed it
with lingerie.
I mean—
jeez…
she shrugs.

There’s a bit of dead
air for the boy, then
he’s gone

from the interview.
 

                *

D scans the Starbucks
where we perch on stools. Says she’s failed
the bar exam a lot, her ex is a nerd, that she wants another degree
& to write a memoir,
But I’m so exhausted!
Then it’s back to her girl, When I take my girl
on errands, I point out

all the jerks in town who’re clients &
we laugh. An orgasm
is like a pedicure for these guys.
I mean—jeez…

Who does that?
she shakes out her long, frosted hair. She’s fifty-three
so she’s got some grey
but it looks classy.

I wonder if she’ll start pointing.

                *

Instead, D looks back at me, One time we saw

this big ass politico I’ve known for years
slurping pancakes with his wife, at IHOP.
She says his name
& I’m ready to stop the recorder.

Too funny, she sighs. She’s so 

far away she squints
at me, says, My girl’s cool. I nod.
We talk about all our guys.
It’s all good.
                *

Just wish there wasn’t

side effects.
She leans away but we’re closer now—like mother,
like daughter. & the monied men in Starbucks seem to be
closing in as the place crowds, but

I’m hooked. Side effects?

I feel nothing. Like that song!
After nine years of this, she sings, I feel nothing
nothing nothing at all…

______________________________________________________________

Jennifer Jean's debut poetry collection is The Fool (Big Table); her awards include a 2020 Kenyon Review Writers Workshop Fellowship; a 2018 Disquiet FLAD Fellowship; a 2017 “Her Story Is” Residency—where she worked with Iraqi women artists in Dubai; and, a 2013 Ambassador for Peace Award for her activism in the arts. Jennifer’s poems and co-translations have appeared in: Poetry Magazine, Rattle Magazine, Waxwing Journal, Crab Creek Review, The Common, and more. She’s the director of Free2Write Poetry Workshops for Trauma Survivors and an editor at Talking Writing Magazine. For more info, visit: http://www.jenniferjeanwriter.weebly.com