3 Poems by Jessie MCCarty

Dream of a Preserved Drinking Vessel with an Etching of Cattle Feet

I was asleep in the crisp of moonlight. A shadow was a creeping feeling. Then, in the brush of her feathery embrace, did I see her, a saint: an incoming halo, a holy cow. I was awake, sitting tall and upright. Her mooing was a visual hallucination. She drew out a thick, white wine from her portals, and gave it to me to drink. All I could think of doing was to get myself into an emotional state. I gave a guttural cry, and got out of bed by trying to make use of a bathtub. But when I got there it was already full of a cool foam, like soap

Stupendous of This

There was a bathroom

I couldn’ t enter. The body

is a trick, able to be sliced

into halves, then quarters.

My fingers burned

in the heat of collapse.

My limbs were so tired

when you asked me to leave.

Summer from whatever.

Open body - seen and felt

and eaten by him. I was

afraid of the whole thing,

the whole, wide thick of it.

Ash on the plate,

like it was never clean.

Know when to stay and let it go.

That was my fortune.

I cleansed myself in

the afterward, reciting

Emily Dickinson. No crowd

Left but me and my dad,

His hands bandaged like a victim.

I’m Sad in Dallas

My mother was in Biloxi just now, on a beach that is not a beach. There, she combs through a lake that isn’t a lake. Road after road, I drive down south. Rock after rock of cement beds, bordered by tiny streams too pathetic to be rivers. We step into a third space, this new city, not a big city by any means, but rather a city composed of two drawings. One of me, one of her. My bags under my eyes. Glitter. Her hair. It’s got that one root of gray.

Jessie McCarty is a cataloger and writer. They are an upcoming MLIS candidate at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee for Information Management. Their poetry, in English and Gaeilge, uses images of the South and Midwest as memory tools. Their full-length debut, Pretty Punks, is forthcoming with Magra Books in December 2025.