Jeannine Hall Gailey

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The Conversation

I am an avenging goddess, she said, severely.
What about that do you not understand?
 
I need you, he said. Even without your costumes.
I lie in the dark and think of you. Every night more.
 
I eat men like you for breakfast. Her right hand gripped
a sword. I’ve forgotten how to make my lips do anything but sneer.
 
I could make you French toast instead, he offered.
He was blond and easy on the eyes.
 
There is no happy ending for us. You’ve seen the stories –
in the end I’d be bent over your slain body,
 
miss the gunshot, the final blow. But think, he said, how sad,
all that you’re missing – the slow sunny afternoons in pajamas,
 
maybe a cat – or an African pygmy hedgehog – on the couch.
Trips to the grocery store. Bad movies.
 
Anyway, she said, I’m late. She picked up a handbag full of arrows.
Please try not to disclose my secret identity. I’ll see you later.
 
He pretended not to care as her shadow lengthened in the doorway.

She pretended not to notice the sudden heaviness of her sword.

The Fox-Wife's Invitation

These ears aren’t to be trusted.
The keening in the night, didn’t you hear?
Once I believed all the stories didn’t have endings,
but I realized the endings were invented, like zero,
had yet to be imagined.
The months come around again,
and we are in the same place;
full moons, cherries in bloom,
 the same deer, the same frogs,
the same helpless scratching at the dirt.
You leave poems I can’t read
behind on the sheets,
I try to teach you songs made of twigs and frost.
You may be imprisoned in an underwater palace;
I’ll come riding to the rescue in disguise.
Leave the magic tricks to me and to the teakettle.
I’ve inhaled the spells of willow trees,
spat them out as blankets of white crane feathers.
Sleep easy, from behind the closet door
I’ll invent our fortunes, spin them from my own skin.

Snow White Dreams
          --from Unexplained Fevers

I fell asleep one night after cheerleading practice.
After that, I didn’t wake up.
 
In my dreams I am trapped inside a television,
watched by a man with no face.
 
Sometimes I sing to animals who can talk.
I try to open the door of a woodland cottage, full of shadows.
 
If I scream, no one can hear me. I am an illusion
everyone wants to be part of.
 
My mother wished me to be beautiful, then hated me for it.
I think she put drugs in my soup.
 
Men come to look at me, even asleep; they take                     photographs.
They murmur over red lips, white skin, ebony hair. A teen dream.
 
Being the pretty one can be so tiring.
I got bored of making small talk.
 
I suspect I snack in my sleep. My tongue is covered with crumbs.
All the clocks have been set wrong. They’re ticking inside my head.
 
I swear there are cameras on me. I have become invisible.
The white walls covered in posters and get-well-soon cards
 
grow dusty, like a tomb. Still, a vacuum
like my cavernous heart; eat it with salt.
 
Poison me with apples, with ribbons, with combs.
I need someone to breathe new life into this body.

Jeannine Hall Gailey's Profile

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The Lost Limbs of Animé Girls in Space

Somehow in these futuristic worlds
we have always left an arm
and a leg behind, as if these amputations
make us seem more accessible, 

a portion of our torsos beneath the torn top
visible - a glimpse of shining silver.
Our hair still charmingly tousled,
we are victims of some civil war

or village atrocity conveniently unwritten,
forgotten now, military campaigns hidden in our pasts.
Only these reminders that we might not be
entirely human – merely a ghost

caught in a metal shell. She’ll give you
an arm and a leg, they joke, while we
wake in the night to scratch phantom skin,
the joints between flesh and machine always aching,

our souls affixed in some permanent alchemy
to this heavy metal.

In Which Jack and Jill Decide Whether to Climb Yet Another Hill
                --from Unexplained Fevers

When this new narrative began it had nothing to do with moving trucks or hospital rooms. It started with clover and costumes, charming children and clamoring crowds, less claustrophobic. It all turned on a dime, the tipping point, and then the long trip down. We swore we would follow each other anywhere, but anywhere turned out to be a lot like Ohio, so we headed for the Coast, the climate cool and the clouds less dramatic. Somehow we turned thirty without thunderous applause, our dreams dissipating into piles of paper.  We stopped trying to perform pirouettes, preferring to keep our feet on the ground. We’ve sunk into the hard mud of a river valley, fingernails turning blue for lack of oxygen. Time to conjure some new magic, one more act for the play, where the pop-top lid reveals not snakes but snapdragons, where the earth stops keeping count of the mornings and shakes us loose.
 
Our backpacks loaded
with crocus bulbs and rosemary
ready to set roots.

The Slayer Asks For Time Off
            --from Becoming the Villainess

It’s hard enough just trying to pick out
the miniskirt that matches my platform jellies

but as you know, the cute-as-a-button cheerleader
must also answer to the darkest demons

(if you’ve watched any animé, you know this drill
already - how I’ll prowl through corridors

looking fragile in the shadows, how the monster
grabs my ponytail from behind and I’m
 
knocked, momentarily, off my tiny feet
but will spring up, brandishing the medieval sword

hiding in my teddy-bear backpack.)
And don’t think it doesn’t get boring, the back flips

and the bite marks and perfectly timed execution
of one more stake through the heart. I’m tired of wiping blood

off my jeans, the adrenaline rush in graveyards.
Just once I’d like to take the night off, maybe

be the damsel in distress, instead of always,
always, wearing the armor and carrying the flag.

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