Colloquial Miss Jane

by Kat Meads

Slightest bump, Tess’d tune-up.
Why blame the weeping girl? Miss Jane
Shared dolls, pearls, pups.
Still: slightest bump, Tess’d tune-up.
Dry to drip, the change abrupt.
Friendship was it, or friendship feigned?
Slightest bump, Tess’d tune-up.
Why blame the weeping girl, Miss Jane?

Shrunk to a no not one —
And whose last meal to blame?
Cousin Laney once weighed a ton
Now shrunk to a no not one.
Supper used to be such fun
When living was her aim.
Shrunk to a no not one —
And whose last meal to blame?

“Hasn’t left the land for days.”
The fault of which is pleasure, pain?
Miss Jane’s auntie in stay-in phase
“Hasn’t left the land for days.”
She’ll talk, walk, swing her gaze
Butter to blooms to kitchen stain.
But: “Hasn’t left the land for days.”
The fault of which is: pleasure, pain?

Turrible, innit?
When the universe pitches a fit
Decides to gang-up on its little bits.
Turrible, innit?
When doers drag and dreamers quit,
Riddlers snag and roamers sit.
Turrible, innit?
When the universe pitches a fit.

A native of North Carolina, Kat Meads is the author of 15 books and chapbooks of poetry and prose and is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship in poetry. “Colloquial Miss Jane” is part of a collection in progress, Miss Jane’s Jane, set in the South. Her third novel based on her home county in North Carolina, In This Season of Rage and Melancholy Such Irrevocable Acts as These, will be published by Queen’s Ferry Press (Plano, Texas) in 2017. Her other two novels are: The Invented Life of Kitty Duncan (Chiasmus Press) and when the dust finally settles (Ravenna Press).