Poetry By Jean Voneman Mikhail

Sean Benham CC




My Baloney Has a First Name.
It’s O S C A R. 

O, scar. My/your 
scar. Let’s trade marks. 
Share our suture stories. 
Me first. Our father loved Pig-
Latin, double entendre, puns, 
oke-jays, word jumbled. 
Wee jokes that broke our hearts. 
We still laugh. We still 
shape-shift our sorrows.  

O scar. My/your scar. 
We both have scars, my sister 
and I, on our nether parts. 
Cold cuts from better selections of beef. 
Behind our backs, fat accumulates. 
Big baloney arms. You are both so full 
of baloney, our mother used to say. 
Picked scabs re-reveal our scars. 
Don’t laugh. It’s not funny.
We both hurt a lot coming down. 

My sister crashed down dead drunk 
on a tray of iced whiskey glasses.
Smashed off her ass. My butt 
slivered open similarity when I slid
down some snowy hill over a broken 
Beefeater bottle left behind. A gin grin 
twisted into horror. Sliced along 
my fault lines. I hobbled home, 
bloodied and alone. 

O scar. My/your scar. 
We’ve held ourselves together 
thus far to face the manhandle.
We assimilate. busted chops. Battered pancake. 
Pigs in a blanket, tabled memory. 
Like Polska kielbasa, we can’t tell 
what’s actually in that manwich. 

O scar. My/your scar. My sister’s 
caesarian section carved along a holy grail. 
My slit wrist, whip stitched. 
Schizoaffective disorder conniption fits. 
Blood lines clotted. Crusty ole doc
whipped out his white bread hands 
to help me heal my mittelschmerz. 
Snipped bits of endometriosis--
go forth—procreate. Tender welts
for hearts, broken. Pig tails chopped off. 

Attempted rape at night rates
in ho down hotel rooms. 
Who believes a slew of slut stories? 
Stories shuffled in through squeeze chutes. 
Pulled ears. Squealed cries 
sounding so similar to laughter
Some sounds sound so similar. 
Some wounds leave no scars. 
No evidence of harm. 
Childhood baloney bites smiled-back at us.
Second chins and chances. 

Still, you smile. You still smile. 

Tough girls. Be tough, girls.
Stiff upper lips. Drop dead serious.
Mixed messages. Unfunny puns.
We are never quite cured of what ails us.
Green-olive-and-red-pimento eye

of pickled baloney, stares us down. 

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Jean Voneman Mikhail  is a former  librarian and composition instructor living in Athens, Ohio. She has published in One Art, Autumn Sky Review, Sheila Na Gig Online, Gyroscope Review, PMSG, and other journals and anthologies.  She was nominated for Best in the Net by Eucalyptus Lit in 2025. 


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