a swan and a pistol
in the mirror the spitting image of every bad girl reflects back at her. she applies eyeliner with the edge of a knife so it’s sharp enough to slice to the quick. slicks too much lipstick (coffee brown, violet purple, wound red) on her lips. some gets on her teeth; she rubs them with the edge of a nicotine finger and spits a drop of poison into the sink. that’s her picture, there, in my wallet. the rakish tilt of her fedora is anything but nice, guys. she catches the lost boys with her fishnets. kisses ‘em and tattoos tears in their eyes. tosses ‘em back then tosses back a shot (or five) of whiskey. she’s a haunted barroom, a heel broken in the sidewalk’s cracks. she’s the jasmine funk of new orleans, and the wonder wheel rising above the sea. how i miss my baby so, but i’m so far away from the city and she’s out there, breaking the drugstore heart of another tin can sailor. she’s in a cabaret, torching songs with a voice that sounds like a pack of lucky strikes soaked in a vat of vanilla bourbon, sprinkled with shattered glass. such a crumbling cookie, such a splotch of greasepaint. a fingerprint smeared on the gloss of a black and white photobooth strip. she’s a strip club angel with a heart of rust and i’m the sucker who fell and fell and fell in love. she loved me back for a month of midnights. i gave her my postage stamps, bought her red shoes, played her sad tunes on drunken pianos. she wore a dress and a tie and a cheetah coat, and i steam-engined my best rumpled suit. she took me out to chinatown. silhouetted herself beneath the neon signs. when the streetlights looked like the stars in my eyes, that mooned she’d nearly disappeared. she gave me a black scarf to remember her by. it turned into a raven, took squawking to the sky. she stood by the window of the last train out of burma shave and as it whistled away i watched her, i watched her as she waved goodbye.
Union Pacific Labyrinth Line
An unambiguous route to the center and back so
it’s not the same as being map-lost. I can pinpoint
my place, tie a red string from one pushpin to
the other but then it’s back to the start again. Not
a maze but a broken record. Evokes metaphor, sacred
geometry, spiritual pilgrimage. I could take a ride
and just sit watching the cabs depart and arrive.
Waiting in line for the night in those October corridors
of wind and ghosts. Sacred geometry of railroad
station bars and tattooed strangers crying into their
Old Style about the one that got away. A torturous
anatomical structure, vena cava as labyrinthine whorls,
more like the inner ear as it listens to its own blood’s
mourning-folklore. As a tiny devil, a minotaur in
miniature, some horned fucker who’s not map-lost
but can’t get out, lows that he will devour you so’s
he’s not alone. In the labyrinth of labyrinths, I thought
of faces reflected in vacant storefronts and fingering
words into the dirt. Diablo. I thought of the rail
road apartment full of candles, brief flash of starlight
as I howled by, going home. Or home. Many come
in times of grief and sorrow. Many share a bottle
of Night Train with their devils. Contemplate
throwing themselves like pennies onto the tracks.
I should have drunk a Thunderbird instead. Behind
that simple name lies a convoluted history. A history
of nights spent sitting in my best friend’s kitchen,
listening to the trains pull out of the station. Wishing
I were on one, going home. A history in reverse. Of
wanting to leave the city and go home to stand
like a candle beneath my best friend’s window. A
vigil of one. A never-home howl, flicker, melt. A
woman was struck by an Electric District train at
the station in south suburban Hazel Crest. The
legend says the thread was golden. Why do I
remember it red? The Operation Lifesaver program
is used to help spread safety messages: Do not
third-rail yourself. Do not arc your body into
electric light. Do not visit the District of Howling
Ghosts, the District of Stars and Candles, the
District of October Taxicabs. When you meet
a devil at the crossroads, hand over your bottle
of bum wine and your broken record and be
on your way. Take photos of evening platforms
and post them on social media. Photos of vacant
lots and cracked backyards in the flickering star
light. Photos of bodies riddled with gold gunshots,
bleeding red graffiti scrawls. Very Top Secret. Kids
like us will be alone forever. Solo vigils. Old Style
ghosts. Police recovered a backpack on the train
platform which contained a suicide note. The
thread is red because the minotaur yanked an
artery right outta my body. Gold blood rusted
railroad red. My minotaur, myself. It is the thread
that binds me here. The devil’s no different. All
those blues singers met themselves at the
crossroads, swallowed their own souls in
exchange for a night train and a little gold, a
little starlight game. All horned beasts just us.
Forever alone, pacing loops, our hooves
wearing deep tracks into record grooves. Not
map-lost but stuck here just the same.
in the city / baby sometimes
there were other summers but they were just the hot
hot heat, not the intoxicated adventures just the gun
shots & the cars’ backfire
the kind of heat gets you so sad you can feel it
in your teeth, your teeth fell out & sunk all skipped-
stone to the bottom of your knotted
guts, my throat gave up its ghost & went all shred,
all knees-in-the-gravel, yeah it was all spooky action
at a distance of 680 odd miles on I-80
we were bad teeth & tummyaches, swollen tonsils
& crotch rot, our huge fucking hearts were nauseous
nauseous nauseous whether together
or apart but near-sick was better than so far away—
when you were so far from the city my heart got
such a big lonesome in it I tried
to shove things in it to fill it up like reverse dumpster
diving, I tried to fill it with protest & polka dots,
freckles & root beer floats, salted
slices of watermelon, Twizzlers melting on the side-
walks of Wicker Park, I tried sundresses that showed
my cleavage, tried licking the salt
from other lovers’ skin, I stayed up drinking in 4 am bars
telling strangers of my sorrows, yeah I even went to shows
sometimes but without you the music bored
me to death & I ran from city to city, without you my city
just wasn’t right, like I needed 2 am donuts & a sandy beach
but all I got was this lousy day-drunk
sometimes I got day-drunk & woozy from beer & heat
I hallucinated your yellow hair & swagger but it wasn’t ever
you—it’s summer in the city &
you’re so long gone from the city & I with my squished
tomato of a sick-as-fuck heart, I start to miss you
baby, sometimes.
Jessie Lynn McMains (they/them) is a multi-genre writer. Their writing has appeared in many publications, including Tiny Essays, Pussy Magic, Moonchild Magazine, Vamp Cat Magazine, Kissing Dynamite, and Corvid Queen. They are the author of several chapbooks, most recently The Girl With the Most Cake and forget the fuck away from me. They were the recipient of the 2019 Hal Prize for poetry, and were the 2015-2017 Poet Laureate of Racine, WI. They are editor/publisher of Bone & Ink Press. You can find their website at recklesschants.net, or find them on Twitter, Tumblr, and Instagram @rustbeltjessie
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