Perfect Stangers
Jac Jemc
I already know. I already know. I already know.
I will speak and you will think how I am much older now.
These people will wait for you and you will wake up somewhere strange.
You are too tired and lightning has hit me.
You died young and these people want your opinion.
You work with your hands and I stare at tree-filled windows.
You come and go and I spike time.
You rub window-panes and I work questions.
You lick corners and I rub back the smoke.
You see the matter and pray; I let go.
You drown in half-dry ponds and I die of hotel coffee.
You loved four things and I counted five.
You test doorknobs and I freeze wasps.
You occupy my cavities and I enter Paris through the mountains.
You lack neither opportunity nor decency and my elegant tactics undo themselves.
You cancel out entire brains of thought and I collect mornings.
You roll the skin over backwards and I have enough faith for each ledge.
You seem increasingly skippy and I walk towards a muddy tale.
There is a man behind your name and I’ve spent my life within other people.
You remind me again and again what this loss has to do with this fence and I mean the same with or without the comma.
Relations
Jac Jemc
My face was stiff with worry.
I’d been washing white linen all day.
You mistook me for a servant.
*
My grandmother has a collection of her own
Dusty old cleaning products.
Vintage hygiene.
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I am a true lady.
I want a daughter named Betty.
*
Ms. Lilly goes to town,
visits her family.
Bugs on their backs.
And when she leaves
they clap their green hands.
*
At age six, I wondered, “Will I be unhappy forever?”
Most of the letters were from Peter Burns Real Estate.
*
They were my brothers from another mother.
It is amazing how a little emergency can cause one to assign titles.
*
There are places where language misses.
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