Ethel

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Ethel

Ethel

The Flea

by
Jessica Q. Stark
Jessica Q. Stark is the author of *Buffalo Girl* (BOA Editions, 2023), winner of a Florida Book Award and a finalist for the 2023 Maya Angelou Book Award, *Savage Pageant* (Birds, LLC, 2020), and five poetry chapbooks, including most recently *The Flea*, which won first place for the MAYDAY microchapbook prize in 2025. She is a Poetry Editor at *AGNI* and is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at the University of North Florida. She co-organizes the Dreamboat Reading Series in Jacksonville, Florida.
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from The Flea

RAMONA FLEA MARKET

So, Nat'ralists observe, a Flea Hath smaller Fleas that on him prey, And these have smaller Fleas to bite 'em, And so proceed ad infinitum.
--Jonathan Swift, On Poetry

1.

Poetry, like a disobedient bitch, noses around the

scrap again. I frequent the Ramona Flea on Saturday, reckless

and swaddled in a Floridian heat advisory.

Pay a dollar entry (up from 2020) and two dollars

for a borrowed shopping cart from the Family Dollar

down the road. Dollars in my wallet I bought second-

hand with a tip-dollar at the bar. Dollars make the trek

worth it; better I haggle for a discount vacuum. I walk

past unleashed hounds, lulled into a chiaroscuro of

human tang. The man with the sandpaper face

fans his arms, recognizes my needlessness for

diatomaceous earth. I’m only here for the fried

chicken, no—the little bunnies, caged, oh, no—

who am I kidding? The visual feast of trash.