Poetry By Jennifer Macbain-Stephens

Jennifer MacBain-Stephens is the author of two full length poetry collections (Yellow Chair Press and Stalking Horse Press.) Her chapbook “Dixit: Every Picture Tells a Story, or The Wrong Items,” is forthcoming from White Knuckle Press in 2017 and “She Came Out From Under the Bed, (Poems Inspired by the Films of Guillermo del Toro)” is forthcoming from Dancing Girl Press. Recent work is at Lime Hawk, concis, decomp, and Inter/rupture. Visit: http://jennifermacbainstephens.wordpress.com/.


Pool Party
Part III: Dessert Buffet

This dessert buffet is all night 
clown nose catastrophe

with extra queen bee sauce
and Rachael Ray know how.

A dollop of presumption
can save you at 2 am.

Dip my fingers into this sugar bowl
Pizza is street smart, carries a knife.

We don’t want your heavy sauce.
We want tangerine sky
and open air lawn smothering,

green old lady hair
and pink pig dip truffles.

Who is eating who?
The sex advice  column doesn’t t know anymore.

Close your eyes, stick out your tongue.
Oh I’m sorry it’s papier Mache.

It felt so real for a second.

Poet Jennifer MacBain-Stephens

Pool Party
Part IV: A Good Wig

Please, can I handle you like a 
Victorian powdered wig?
Pull you taut and stretch 
you over some good, hard wood?

Don’t splice hairs.

This exposure may take a while.



Those Antlers Look Hot on Your Baby

Finger a cupcake, lavishly

Bare a bloody skateboard.
sock it to the skull breaker. 

Jaw chaser,  alarm explosion.

Heavy metal   canal    candy pop   Portishead bunny 

Red Hots 2000.

Book starch  this shrunken head to bits.

Satellite silver sex tray.
Dot to dot animal voice.
Glint of golden wedding:
she is sexy on repeat.

Play duct tape on a one handed piano  


****

The indigo lipped fish spoke:

I appear normal to most townspeople

Take a our new war holiday tour.



Technical Bestiary

gray slinky mouse tail
you sexy  phase one to technology 
connect me to the mad man with the box,
not Dr. Who, but my Friday night hair
no one wants a rodent in their hair
but I could wear you with your 
glowing red orb of awareness
your kidney shaped brain matter
dual push buttons
like Oscar night
like slick Rick Steve
Like money in the mail
turn me over
tease my predator torso
with your little roller feet
zig zag around the screen
touch all of the places he missed
plug in, charge up, stay up,
I’m done, go to sleep
mouse in the house
or – in dreams a house is a
soul.



Train Station

In this brown box train station to the past the women talk about Josh Brolin’s ex-girlfriend and what a great body she has. She was in some kind of fatal attraction movie and meanwhile a writer takes screen shots of spousal conversations. Texts that really “get” the relationship. But we don’t want to pay for it online. The boys outside fret guitar strings and kick shuffle kick. You’ve never seen so many pairs of shoes so have a good night and we all hate the IRS. The other tiny faces freeze on a platter of wind and sails out the car window. Memory is a shroud. Glean the present sadness. Pixel by pixel inflicts a virus over hair, eyes, and teeth. Every photo catches the sadness. Hit every refresh button. Never refresh: it’s too much.