C. E. Janecek
Writer | Editor | Reviewer
About Me
C. E. Janecek is a Czech American writer and freelance editor who received a poetry MFA from Colorado State University. Janecek's writing has appeared in Poetry, Gulf Coast, Cream City Review, Booth, the Florida Review, and elsewhere.
portrait by Paul Christean
The People Leporidae
I vowed to give a rabbit religion, a weight to match
her bulk in my prepubescent arms. Sunlight illuminating
her ears like church windows: pink pulse, spider veins,
the altar’s velvet. When you hold a rabbit like a child,
her toes stretch to reveal claws like crochet hooks. Teeth,
unshorn, will grow until they pierce her skull like a crown
of thorns like a spear like Longinus like a stake.
I told my rabbit, you’ll be eaten one day.
excerpt from “The People Leporidae”
first published in POETRY, January 2022
Linocut by C. E. Janecek
“because I prayed this word: I want”
– Sappho, trans. Anne Carson