In a show titled after her own name
Jessica Lee
Donna Reed plays Donna Stone, wife
to a doctor named Alex Stone
as in bedrock, ancient
surface to be carved
with modern day blades—one woman, two names
infinite bodies to be played
yet Donna, nothing more than a stock
typecast darling
niece, mother, smiling nurse
always the sweetheart, never the femme
fatal. It’s only in her fantasies
on screen where she plays her dream self
Donna the vixen in fish-
nets smoke coiling from her painted hole
of a mouth abandoning
her nest for the blazing
light of the Hollywood sign
what’s in a name a Stone
by any other name might be a Reed
and Donna is both iron ore and waif
in silk crepe willowed and hard
she herself the deliberate conflation
soft blade
wavering in the wind but also heavy weight
anchor to a notion called home keeping
roof and country rooted to some soon
to be mowed-lawn
Jessica Lee is an Assistant Poetry Editor for Narrative Magazine and an Editorial Reader for Copper Canyon Press. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in BOAAT, cream city review, Diagram, Fugue, Passages North, phoebe, Prairie Schooner, Zone 3, and elsewhere. She was a finalist for the 2017 Greg Grummer Poetry Award and the 2017 So to Speak Poetry Contest. She lives in the Pacific Northwest. Find her online at readjessicalee.com.