1.    Clients:

There’s the “heavy” from his mother’s basement. Clammy. Stupid. Sweet. I had to lift folds of flesh to find it. She’d bathe his grease off & be kind with kind words that always worked. 

There’s the “windsor knot.” That silent addict—on time for his (breakfast, lunch, dinner) release. For the ritual that screws him into his dry clean shirt, afterwards. He has trimmed. He has yanked on his beveled black sock. 

There’s the “just hubby.” Always for the awful hour. Married to his friend, “the mother.” He likes their kids. Likes to chat. Likes you smart. & this isn’t cheating, She’s basically agreed. He is legion. He just won’t go.
 
2.    Boxes:

They’d say, You came really hard! She’d say, No I didn’t. She could say that. She could box them up like dolls, like corpses she makes pretty for the family at the viewing. 

Jennifer Jean’s debut poetry collection is The Fool (Big Table 2013). Her new manuscript, titled OBJECT, was a finalist for the 2016 Green Mountains Review Book Prize. She is the recipient of Waxwing Journal’s first annual Good Bones Prize, and she received an Ambassador for Peace Award in 2013 for her activism in the arts. Jennifer’s work has appeared in: Crab Creek Review, Rattle, Denver Quarterly, Mud City Journal, Solstice Magazine, and more. She’s Poetry Editor of The Mom Egg Review, Managing Editor of Talking Writing Magazine, and Co-director of Morning Garden Artists Retreats. Jennifer teaches Free2Write poetry workshops to trauma survivors and to sex-trafficking survivors. For more information, visit: www.fishwifetales.com - or follow Jennifer on Twitter and Instagram: @fishwifetales