Category: Poetry

My Name is Jennifer, and I Don’t Have a Legal Middle Name, Either by Jennifer Jeanne McArdle

When my mom was pregnant with me, they asked my older sister what she thought about her sibling still growing in the womb.
“It’s a girl, and her name is Jennifer,” she insisted a few times.
Jennifer is a very common name for girls born in the 70s or 80s. Even in the 90s we had two, sometimes three, Jennifers in my class most years.
But my parents didn’t know where my sister had heard the name. There were no Jennifers on her favorite shows or in her class. Her best friend at the time was a “Valentina”.
Picked it up on the tail-end of its zeitgeist, maybe.
My parents couldn’t consider any other name after I was born.

City Triptych by HLR


1.

Thursday night in the city / 10pm-ish I think / I’m busy / doing nothing / watching / the girl in green as she trips down the escalator & cuts her knee / it bleeds a little & her friends scream. Apparently / once lost / sanity is hard to find; seeing is believing & I am blind [drunk]. I can’t remember exactly where I lost my mind but I might well have lost it here / Kings Cross no apostrophe / where the streets are mean & the people are mean(er) & I myself have nowhere to be & no one to see (I was meant to party with a drag queen but he’s pulled a sickie) & I must stop praying to a God who doesn’t believe in me & yes, the Eurostar is tempting—Montmartre in the morning—drunken dreaming? clearly: I don’t have the fucking money for properly escaping. And look at the men on a stag-do whistling / grinning / leering. Misery hates company but danger becomes me. Where I end up this evening remains to be seen but for now / for right now / it’s just me, Chablis & Sarrazin (Patti gave me Albertine for free) & the grime of city life trapped between my grinding teeth.