Emily Janik
Weekend Cucumber Affairs
“I have pores like orange peels,”
“I’m a trypophobic”
I like to crunch the seeds in my apple
With my teeth,
The silicone on my fingertips
Resembles his blood beard
On a clarion Sunday.
That Sunday, unlike all the other
Sundays that habitually ends with flapper girls
Licking your fingers
Like puppies,
But,
slower…
There were cucumbers
Carved into hollow canoes of verdant skins
Decaying in window light
On the table that significant afternoon,
When the grandfather clock
Sung its ballad of Vladimir Lenin
Each hour I waited for your arrival
And his body stayed whist in glass
A garden full of plastic knives
In my back
Like a backpack.
I’m a schoolgirl riding a bicycle
Stuck up like a field of ripe tomatoes tied to sticks
To stay,
“Up straight.”
To stay,
“Grounded”
My meticulously calculated
Exponential growth chart
Of the woman across the street inching
To her mailbox with a walker.
No correlation.
Butternut toffee dust
In amidships of cucumber canoes
From desolate breakfasts.
Alas,
Monday mornings,
Twisted door knobs,
Rotten cucumbers,
Smelly garbage bags,
Windows of school girls riding bicycles.
The Stoned Ape
A desolate African savanna
awaits a fiery pulse.
But on all ape tongues speckled
caps dissolve like sugar,
caramelizing
in the sun’s hearty heat.
The apes, now dancing naked,
chant at the crows.
The crows alarmed
at the sight,
Tuck their coal
wings tight
from the threat
of vast abyssal eyes.
Ah
the trance and the peril.
The apes,
they gleam,
grow,
balance on two.
This, the design of
a treacherous program.
They eat
and sleep with leisurely will.
Obey at each impulse.
discipline, an esoteric figment.
Do they know the
difference
between want and
need?
To need:
is to drink?
Is to fuck?
Fuck, fuck, fuck!
To want: is to dream?
Is to fuck?
Where the elements exist
As only themselves,
or as symbols of
consciousness.
Oh!
Consciousness!
Such a playful
little deceit.
Existing or not
Existing.
Fruition of consciousness
takes diligent work and care.
Evolution is pain
Growth is pain.
When capable of conception,
Conceive.
That is
the game.
That is
the program.
Warts
When I was young, I watched the clouds change color and reduce to silver mist.
Before they disappeared, the shapes would shift into dancing caricatures and smiles,
wearing my furry brow and parched lips. It was an aurora affair my forbearers have
seen through the decades and I finally witnessed. —Currently, my forever seems
daunting. With each breath I count the seconds of my exhale, multiplying them,
dividing them, then adding them all back together so I can feel once more.
Youngness, infiniteness, love galore. —I find new warts on my fingers each morning.
My achy desires find fruition through my skin. Profound as that colorful sky,
As ordinary as a bed sheet drying on a line.
Emily Janik graduated from Eastern Michigan University in December 2019 with a B.A. in Creative Writing.