Somewhere Near the Bowery

by Treehouse Editors

Jennifer Juneau

2 am and it’s so cold out my face is about to fall off

I empty pennies into the hand of a drifter

Humans will evolve into mythological creatures, he yells after me

E walks home, taking her accent with her

A swan, smack in the middle of New York City,

With one gold eye

Follows me to the 24-hour Rite Aid for a Kit Kat and a Coke

To the Second Avenue subway

To the last drag of a cigarette before it’s out

Your name in lights

(Jesus it’s cold)

(But there’s nothing he could do)

The weather is planning us

Let’s solve it together

Jennifer Juneau’s work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize twice, for the Million Writers Award, and a Sundress Best of the Net and has appeared in Cincinnati Review, Columbia Journal, Evergreen Review, Pank, Live Mag!, Sensitive Skin Magazine, Seattle Review, and elsewhere. She has a novel, UberChef USA, due out this year by Spork Press, as well as a poetry collection by Is A Rose Press. She lives in New York City where she is active in prose/poetry readings on the lower east side and Brooklyn, namely La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club and KGB Bar.