Jesse the Vegetable
Jesse is the color of a rotten tomato
all summer she walks the concrete burner and cooks like sour meat
somehow still walking with feet made of cardboard marquees
and hands sugar-shaking
she strolls upside-down
tap dancing insanely
she blends into blood vessels in my eyes and I blink
she drags a refried cigarette and bags of canned heat
Jesse is a loud mumble clatter
her teeth are broken piano keys
chipping dissonant sonatas
Jesse is the color of a sunrise
she wears the infinite like a sick joke
burned hitchhiking 40 miles from Fresno's dump road
walking on calluses toward toxic oasis
a hazy distance away Mt. Diablo whispers "jump"
Jesse tweeks weak bones
she is the color of a dying light bulb
back in French Camp they know a different girl
a smooth white face in a dead bar
her parents grew a ghost there
only a red body remains
Jesse is the color of beets
beat up and weak
growing still
in the royal light of the valley sun
in a piss stained park bathroom
in the shadow of the Hagen Museum
where a mummy was once on display
Jesse wrestles devils in her stomach that whisper dark secrets
limbs like toothpickaxes kink crooked movements
she is still spoon fed
lighting candles on the levee
drooling on the soil
until she's colored pale wheat
and becomes a weed
those eyes still darting
inside a fortress of ice
a frozen vegetable
a bruised fruit of knowledge
mistakenly taken for ripe and placed in overlooked gardens
her polka-dotted skin jerks in a fit of lost symmetry
and smiles sideways
telling us she is sick by vomiting
and we do nothing
because she is homeless and the color of a beautiful Stockton tomato
rolling down the slants of the South Side freeway
and spattering in front of a 7-11
for all ripe eyes to mourn
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