What the Officer Said

This city unstrings its finger
bones, unravels the dress

I hide behind; doors
fixed shut, eyes on every 

clock blind. Solitaire 
cards played in the dark

       This is no game;
       I’ve seen it all before. 

picking petals off daisies
drawn on my skin by his desire.

The river’s polluted, 
the lake fire, my rowboat

rotten wood. I’ve seen
strange things

       Lady, I’m not here 
       to be your friend. 

my cats dead in the trash, 
midnight ride I woke 

with the car spinning
like a carnival teacup, 

a gun lipped against my cheek.
Broken birds, bags of spilled sugar 

       Take out restraining order. 
       Your kind go back, you wait 

       too long, and Lady, next week 
       I’ll clean you off the floor.

All night shelling pistachios
in the house of sad stories,

I collar hope if it wanders
by, my consolation prize. 

---

Jana-Lee Germaine is a Senior Poetry Reader for Ploughshares. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Water~Stone Review, Iron Horse Literary Review, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Chestnut Review, Tinderbox, New Ohio Review, Nimrod, Cimarron Review, EcoTheo Review, Bellevue Literary Review, and elsewhere. She is a recipient of the Patricia Dobler Poetry Award and is the Social Media Marketing Manager for Presence. She earned an MFA from Emerson College. A survivor of domestic violence, she lives with her husband, four children, and four rescue cats in semi-rural Massachusetts. She is a member of the Board of Trustees for her local public library, and she can be found online at janaleegermaine.com.