by Jessie Lynn McMains

 

i.

Name me woman and I’ll open up my chest and show you the wind; April wind, its easterly flow.
Call me man and I’ll lift my skirt and show you the fly-trap dogbane,
its poison lilac threading the polluted riverbank. Call me and I’ll show you the river,
Kinnickinnic, the mixing-together. All the trash I picked and the fish, salmon and trout, their
return, gathering. Name me gathering-place and I’ll show you the place where the freights
screeeee past on the overhead tracks; the androgynous dark beneath.
Call me girl and I’ll show you the sunken tugboat full of sailor ghosts, the river rats,
the raccoons in their bandit masks, the little boy who played pirate with a sword-
stick. Name me boy and I’ll show you this mermaid, his river; this dark, the wind.

ii.

Name me. I’ll open. My chest, the wind—easterly.
Call me skirt and fly-trap, poison lilac. Polluted riverbank.
Call me river, Kinnickinnic. Trash-fish. Gathering-place.
I’ll show you. The freights, the tracks. The androgyne. Dark
beneath. Girl sailor. Ghost river. Bandit boy. Who played pirate?
I’ll show you this—mermaid. This river-dark. This wind.

iii.

Name me: April, early, lilac. Fly-trap. Trash. Fish-place.
Freights on tracks. The beneath. Place where pirates played
with boys. Mermaid-river. Androgynous dark. The wind.

 

 

 

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Jessie Lynn McMains (they/she) is a poet, writer, spoken word performer, zine maker, and artist, amongst other things. She is the author of several books and chapbooks, most recently Wisconsin Death Trip (Bone & Ink Press, 2020) and Left of the Dial (Scumbag Press, 2022). She was the 2016-17 Racine Poet Laureate, and the July-December 2021 Racine Writer-in-Residence. She won the 2019 Hal Prize for Poetry, and her poem “[Santa Muerte, I ask you to remember…]” received an Editor’s Choice commendation in the 2023 Allen Ginsberg Poetry Awards. When she’s not creating, you can find her wandering her neighborhood, haunting the stacks of the library, or playing music with her husband and kids. You can find more at her website recklesschants.net, or on Instagram and Tumblr @rustbeltjessie.