Dear Godfrey Logan:

Please find below four poems for _(A Brilliant) Record Magazine: "Confession #12", "Inventor's Glee", "On Being Human" and "Your Odds".
My work has been featured or is upcoming in Two Review, decomp, Poesia, Ouroboros Review, MiPoesias and Existere, among others. My chapbook Micropleasure was published by Leadfoot Press in 2008. I reside in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where I assist in editing the eclectic literary journal Third Wednesday.

Janann Dawkins

Confession #12


There is no speaking.
She talks to herself
even though she has

a roommate who won't
talk to her. The roommate
stalks through the house,

stirs the widening doorframes,
retreats to the bedroom
behind her head, riffle

shuffles for a game of solitaire.
On the other hand she has
a jukebox full of atonal music,

enough to speak to the damned.
She talks to the music, plays her hand
and demonstrates the mania

of listening everywhere:
she closes her eyes
and stares.


------------------------------------------------------

Inventor’s Glee
(in the wake of a successful poem)


My entire
tarpaulin skin
shimmers like a
licked clitoris
tottering
on orgasm,

my ears whine with the charge
of camera-flash,

my shadow
becomes my secret admirer

and my neurons anticipate
the synapses of others.

I'm thus afflicted for hours.


----------------------------------------------------

On Being Human


Eat, sleep, and excrete.
With luck, you fuck.


----------------------------------------------------

Your Odds


You can’t elude it. Were it
a fire you’d trance

as your pantslegs
dazzle with heat.

It’s red; it’s black.
No matter your turn, it’s there

to greet you, the beggar
trawling for change: you,

upended, surrender
your last bit.