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Winter 2008
Dean Brink
Alan Catlin
Jim Doss
Darrell Epp
Taylor Graham
Ken Gurney
Michelle Lerner
Michele Lesko
Lynn Lifshin
M
Corey Mesler
Mitchell Metz
Bryan Mitschell
Maurice Oliver
Patty Paine
Jayne Pupek
Nic Sebastian
Shawn Sorensen
Lynn Strongin
Christy Tomecek
David Jordan
Richard Rippon
Jack Swenson
Doug Ramspeck
David Jordan
Micki Myers
Teresa White
Jeff Calhoun
Patricia Gomes
Jennifer VanBuren
Jai Britton
Patrick Carrington
Alex Nodopaka
Order "Trim" Mannequin Envy's first print anthology
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Jayne Pupek
Winter 2008
Late Fall
Moths have eaten holes in my winter clothes. I can't afford new ones.
Was it last December we parted? I seem to remember
months of muddy boots and uneaten food, the smell of
someone I didn't know lingering in the rooms of my house.
I make weekly treks to the library. Sometimes
it's hard to return books I want to keep.
I once told the librarian I'd lost a book. I paid the sum.
The book I kept was by a man whose wife
had fallen from a subway platform. The train
crossed her body, snapping her spine in half.
She'd gone out that day to buy a cake for a photo shoot
and came back a paraplegic. Now her husband sketches things:
ketchup bottles, a dog, his wife seated in a wheelchair.
I take photographs. I'm working on a series of earthworms
feeding on leaves inside a Coke bottle. I admit its staged.
I place the worm and leaf inside, using tweezers
to position the duo more or less upright.
It isn't long before the worm begins to eat.
An argument could be made that the more primitive a life form,
the more reliably it adheres to its nature.
Sometimes the light pierces the holes in the leaves
and the segments of the worm appear deeper, distinct.
People forget how much you need light to get shadows.
Even now I think something beautiful could come
from the holes in my clothes.
I might stand in winter's pale light.
You might come back, as if by instinct,
drawn by the shadow of my body hitting brick.
Mannequins
A trio in the storefront window,
dressed in black lace and pushup bras.
Two adolescent boys strut by, point at their
cocks, direct the mannequins to blow them.
It's not tenderness the boys want, nothing like
the gentle handling of the shop clerk
as she dresses replicas for the next display,
not even the comfort of anonymous sex
with an inanimate object
fashioned to resemble someone human.
What they want is the chance to defile
without repercussion, to unleash
the rage that propels and defines them.
What they want is to subdue figures
as curved and rigid and unforgiving
as the mothers who never came home.
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Jayne Pupek holds an MA in psychology and is a poet and novelist from Richmond, VA. Her first novel, Tomato Girl, is forthcoming from Algonquin Books (2008). Also forthcoming in 2008 is a book of poems, Forms of Intercession (Mayapple Press). Her chapbook, Primitive, is available from PuddingHouse Press.
JaynePupek@aol.com
Click to visit her WEBSITE AND BLOG
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