DIAGRAM :: Jessica Tanck

2 POEMS

Jessica Tanck

DARKNET MISSED CONNECTIONS

You drove a blue mattress truck up through the pines. I watched from under
the fence. Hard to say hello
through a mouthful of bees.

A Ouija board might be more useful,
but here goes: your name is carved
in the cello I bought. I can smell
you in the wood, feel you reclining
between my thighs.

You were standing where
the ocean took the first highway.
Beside the pickled onions and bone
truck. Your eyes ran glacial
down me. I couldn't stop staring
at your bare foot clutching
the gravel on the road's shoulder.

Since you stumbled by,
the nails have been weeping
rust down the concrete. I've seen a fox
lapping at their dirty veins—

That urn you overturned? Well,
my sister's ashes somehow liquefied
and she's seeping indigo
into the floorboards.
I'll give back your jacket
if you join us for one last sleepover.

I sat for three hours
with its warm neck
in my lap. You liar.
If anything, the clumps
of knotted mane softened me.
Beauty like that—monstrous.

DARKNET PRODUCT/SERVICE REVIEWS

Not worth the time unless you're
so thirsty your throat's stripped.
Stay home and take the pills instead.

Sweet girl. But usually waist-deep
in lake, dodging the gnarled fingers
of low-hanging branches and/or men.

Disappointed. Within days of staining,
both the wood in question and adjacent
bedrooms were crawling with centipedes.

Eroticism of the highest order. Hairless,
concave beauty. Pray that I'll be forgiven.

The scent of this dip haunts my dreams.
Will never be able to look my brother
in the face again. Use with caution.

Makes me feel loved. Barely need human touch
with a chair this supportive. Like sinking
beneath the silt of a lake full of midnight.

Do note that, if submerged beyond six hours,
body hair will fry off. If stench and/or inner
ear pain persists after two uses, call for assistance.

Mostly innocuous, but cut
with a copper edge you'll gash
your tongue on. Savor it.

The spores for these poems came when I read Brian Booker's “Pennsylvania: A Guide to Lodging” (Vol. 1: [link] & Vol. 2: [link]), which crawled under my skin in the best way possible. I became obsessed with the careful, damningly specific details with which Booker etches these disquieting, funny, and truly haunting pieces, and wondered if it might be possible to evoke that same depth of feeling with poems that explored voices in digital spaces. At the time, I was living alone in my grandparents' house, huddled in forest on the shores of Lake Michigan, where limited internet and phone service made communication with the outside world difficult, amplified loneliness and longing. These poems explore a sort of fictionalized shadow world that haunted people might reach into for comfort, self-expression, and intimacy.