Jenna Jaco

Foot Content

Little miss wretched
sexy claw. Little miss
barbecued forklift. I went
to the tenacious searching store
and everyone there knew you,
once. They all firmly grasped it
flipflop-like til it slipped
thru their sorry toes. The it
is you, the you is me. We
grease ourselves up.
But my babies? They grip.
They dig up candy corns
from the memory muck and
one, two, three—dinner!
Do not say girl dinner
at me. My sustenance
is scooped, slathered,
piled into a bowl who
hangs out in a trench coat
at the diner. He’s like
Bowl? I haven’t heard that
name in years. I get Bowl
to put out the cigarette
and come home with me,
catch what I ladle. I make
shit up. Example: once
when a boy wronged me
his car disappeared
days after. I did not
steal it, but when I do
my towel-scrunch exercises
in a bid to make my arches
absolutely jacked, I promise
I still feel myself curling
around the gas pedal.

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Jenna Jaco (they/she) is a poet and technical writer from Texas. She has had poems published in Foglifter, BRUISER, Passages North and elsewhere. Their debut full-length collection, Mall Water, was released in 2024 with Kith Books.