I HAVE ALWAYS DEPENDED ON THE KINDNESS OF STRANGERS
—Tennessee Williams
Sister from a vague past,
I've come back from farther than that.
Let me in and I'll sing to you the funeral blues.
Why does your skin sweat so?
Is this life at its best? Do you think
Your penury gets a rise out of me?
Let me cross your threshold
Chauffeuring mantles of summer fur, a history.
My voice rises above the screech
Of a locomotive: I am a revolver
Loaded with rhinestones, poems a dead boy wrote.
I wear his tight-lipped melody around my conscience
And it's my choice if I sing it to you in the dark
Till darkness finds my voice. It was one trick
After another until they kicked me out of town.
Don't frown—I'm here now
To smother the bruise on your face with a frozen steak.
Your old man's torment hangs in the air about to shriek
And when he finds me here the scene won't be pretty.
So fetch me a drink and kill the lights.
Take a load off sister, this may be a long night.
Jennifer Juneau's work has appeared in many journals including American Poetry Journal, Cimarron Review, Cincinnati Review, New Zoo Poetry Review, Passages North, Seattle Review, and elsewhere, and has been featured on Verse Daily as poem of the day. A recipient of two prizes from the California Poetry Society, her collection, More Than Moon, was a National Poetry Series finalist.
