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Three Poems
by Lesley Janike


Oklahoma!

I'm sick of the farmer, sick of the rancher, sick of the prairie
between them. I'm the milky-white surrey-puller, part woman,

part mare. I dream of California. There's a native gal out
there:
Lady of Sorrows, Lady Land O'Lakes, Lady of Butter.

She can go black bird and call the tornado down. I see Her
picture everywhere. Oklahoma, your Kansas City is a dandy,

but I want L.A., highways that cross deserts the way
kids cross fingers over hearts to stop a fib from taking.

O, She of the Thrilling of the Sky, She of the Gracing
of the Plain! Her hair tumbles in waves of celluloid.

At night She crouches whispering on the drive-in screen.
She says, Pocahontas was a fool but knew enough to change

her name. So call me Marilyn. Make me a star and mob me
in the check out line. I'll draw my heart on a dirty napkin.

I'll kiss the air. Oklahoma, someday when I hold a gold
study of the world's First Moving Picture Queen,

at the mic I'll say I come from a trailer, or a holler, or
from Her body that spreads, a blanket of skin, all the way

from Carolina to here, this exact spot. I'll say, thank you.
Thank you. Then with Her in my hand, I'll disappear.

Camelot

Where are the simple joys of maidenhood?

Signing off on eternal spring, my bond to you is like an Italian
greyhound
to its master. O the bottles of spring water you bring! O the closets
of shoes!
Camelot, you freed me from Kentucky and from Tennessee, put me on-
screen till all my faults make me, call me the glued-together daughter
of the royal family, a filly and just, sequined gown cut to the crotch,
fur draping my shoulder. Arthur, famous remover of swords, was once a
hawk,
then a robin. He killed and was killed, all before the age of twenty.
Funny,

I turned into a queen, spun this body and let knights scramble
the message: Magic. If might's for right then I might, Camelot,
come to you
in drag, singing down your turret, through your garden my train a
torrent.
Tighten the frame on my topiary face, eyes heart-shaped, bones the
anvil
on the stone that holds Excalibur like a kid in the bitch of its
embrace.
I wasn't there to build myself but anyway I grew, twisted into a
tree pretending
to be a tree. Camelot, pull this blade from my breast and May Day crown
me.

Gypsy Rose Fantasy

You gotta get a gimmick
The svelte length of a stride you unpeeled your glove,
becoming nearly naked, mostly clothed. Your yang,
I unzip my fly, no ovation. Ma stripped at twelve
for boys and pennies. Rose, water freezes in spring.
Rose, the twenty-first century already blows. I
can't get time with the town's best gynecologist
and you're traveling unknown, third eye bloodshot,
breast a joke. June regrets your brunette. I'm sorry
to be such a dirty blonde. You're an elusive unicorn.
Allow virgins to enter your wood. Speak to me
and in my book I'll copy down your thousand
travesties, light the vacancy over your undressed
shoulder, cull my naked brain's transmitted signal,
confuse words and love, couture and solitude till
the more I wear the more I'll be: stage empty, bare
fingers poised over the letters Let me entertain. For
you I do. Sister, blank belly of obsidian, I'm an absolute
zero dance floor where stars are born spinning.