Poetry By Jessica Ballen

Kyle Pearce CC



Daughter of a Salesman 

Packed my bags on one coast and fled 
to the other. Pack up all my cares and woes. 

The only time I ever felt safe 
was when dad sang— Here I go, 

singing low. If he was singing, 
he wasn’t slaughtering. 

I zoned out in front of the screen, blasting 
Brady Bunch, Full House. The laugh track 

and the sound of grinding junk food between molars
overpowered whatever yelling tried to enter. 

The best coast is the opposite of the Cheers theme song:
I’ve been singing it wrong for years. 

Dad doesn’t know my name here, calls 
a 631 number and speaks to a stranger. 

Three thousand miles for some space. 
The sun’s too strong 

in Los Angeles, bleaches my hair. 
Strips my frontal lobe of all its gloom, 

except when I tie my ankles to a desk chair,
forcing my hand to send postcards. 

I write letters—26. The age I first moved 
out from under his roof. 

Everyone eventually left 
him in that house, except the old family 

dog, who shook whenever he spoke. 
She would piss and shit right by the back door, 

drowning us in wet eyes 
as we walked out the front.

​


Jessica Ballen, MFA, is a Pushcart Prize nominated poet serving as a guest editor for Frontier Poetry and is on the reading board for Sundress Publications. Previously, they have served as Editor in Chief of Lunch Ticket and Managing Editor of Defunkt Magazine,. Their work can be found or is forthcoming in SWWIM Every Day, RHINO Poetry, and Okay Donkey (among others). Catch them compulsively posting on their Instagram stories @_j___esus, listening to dream pop with their four cats, and dancing in the Willamette River with their writer husband, Steven H. Turrill.


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