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

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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.