flatline by JESSICA POPESKI
Jessica Popeski is a Classical Voice and Creative Writing graduate of Brandon University, where she was awarded the Silver Medal in Creative Arts for her thesis, Big Sky. Sickle Moon. Her poetry has been published internationally in Acta Victoriana, The Cadaverine, carte blanche, The Irish Literary Review, Canvas Magazine, Boston Poetry, Room, Leaf Press, The Nervous Breakdown, Hart House Review, The Windsor Review, Harbinger Assylum, Dusie, and more. A recipient of the Ontario Graduate Scholarship, she has just polished off her thesis for the MFA in Creative Writing program at the University of Guelph, and has poetry PhD applications on her horizon. She published two chapbooks with Anstruther Press in 2015: “Oratorio” and “The Wrong Place,” which made the syllabus of an undergraduate English Literature course. She was raised, for the most part, in Moscow, Russia, and Sheffield, England, by her mother and grandmother, and is in the thick of a primary school Teaching Assistantship, having recently rerooted to South Yorkshire from Toronto.
flatline
for jessica(s)
i
when it rains it drizzles ceaselessly
so everything gets soaked
in my dreams I sleep
until six
ribs are scaffolding
stretch skin like cellophane
over leftovers
ii
grated inside out
by a gang
of moths
their hooligan wings
she won’t make it through the night
iii
sudafed-drunk
a purposeful od
on-call to hit
book flight
at the
drop
of a held hand
i text
please keep me posted
twelve times
had a muffin for breakfast
yeah right
auto-correct predicts words
that start with
c will be cat
a for anxiety
binge on radio
shurrup brain
writing worries on vulnerable pink
wet nurse futility
loss
iv
remember her arm in pickle jar juice
up to her elbow
blue bottles belly-up
in the crimps of curtains
kalinka moya!
everyone needs their peck of dirt
v
a biro explodes its black bowels
in my backpack
bloodies everything
i find a TTC token
and a ten pound note
in the breast pocket of my autumn coat
i am not stung by a bee
her paintings populate my walls
i inherited her cat
he throws himself at the window
at bluetits barking
in the nude arms of an ash
the drill from condo construction
drones the unshakeable f of a
flatline