Jane Muschenetz

Emerging writer and fully grown MIT nerd, Jane (Yevgenia!) Muschenetz, was granted asylum in the U.S. as a Jewish refugee from Ukraine at ten years old. She is now a mother to two very American kids. Both of these poems are included in her upcoming chapbook, All the Bad Girls Wear Russian Accents, forthcoming with Kelsay Books (2023). Connect with Jane and her work via her website: PalmFrondZoo.com.

Stilettos Over Grass Plots

I don’t need a closet full of Gucci,
There are only so many Russian funerals I’m required to attend

It is not disrespect or impracticality–
That full-breasted, open-lipped Eulogy in brand-name sunglasses

Carried groceries ‘cross snow-laid banks to feed
Her ailing parents, tore open every artery

To sharpen the blade of beauty
Migrating birds have their own kind of camouflage…

My people wear stilettos over grass plots
Outline tragedy with leopard print and lipstick

Lift up tombstones to label-check, if
They are good enough to belong here

It seems unnecessary, I know, especially
Since we recognize our flock

Not by attire, but something more sinister than Genuine
Leather, something behind the eyes asking

Females of the species, what’s the use?
Of being a weapon and not knowing

How to wield yourself

Please Stop Buying Pottery

It’s so hard on you when they shatter
The tall, skinny glasses you bought at Vintage on Divisadero,
The ones perfect for sipping beer, the porcelain saucer
Whose death-plummet orphaned the gold-rimmed cup it used to hold
The shards, the splinters of them disappearing
Into “Now I’ll never again...” of your grief
My “Na Schastie!” (For Luck!) comes too soon for you
But I was raised by people who throw plates and crush glassware at celebrations
Precisely to avoid a greater shattering
I am never far from channeling a Jewish grandmother (“Thank God no one was hurt!”)
Thinking of all the tiny/big ways it could have been worse
I am all action, sectioning off the crime scene (Kids!
Don’t come into the kitchen!)—getting the vacuum
Preventing what damage I still can,
Sweeping away broken pieces before you try fixing them

It is a gift, I remind myself, our different definitions of what is beyond repair

I have watched you in times of crisis, how you rise
And conquer, how
When cracks spiral and radiate from my center you
See me whole
You, Store of Treasures,
Keep planting things into the home I am desperately trying to declutter,
Paying homage to mid-century aesthetics with lush ferns and glazed planters,
Admiring the Japanese art of filling missing parts (of ceramics) with gold
Asking me what I think of your latest find
“Beautiful,” I admit
By which I mean, you and also
“Please, stop buying pottery”