Jesse Loren



LL Cool Bean Winter Catalogue


FEEL the softness and the quality of the man of five o’clock shadow with temple grey 
hair in his yellow Challenger fleece which provides freedom of movement for hiking,
backpacking, or cross-country skiing, or smiling interminably with his arm around
the downcast blond watching feet. She is Stepford smiling on 83, he is camp pants 
on 61. They are not black with corduroy coated child under red tartan plaid. Her eyes 
straight into the camera, his at the child, the child in today’s mother’s breast. Oh 
Madonna! They are Portugal chamois, skillfully crafted to achieve the optimum nap. 
Turn to rugged cotton chinos and red comfort fleece on the man pouring chocolate 
for the red-headed toddler—all need and dark loden before burning his tongue. 
These moments the five o’clock shadow man with temple grey hair reappears, sinister in 
his perpetual smile under a Scottish tweed touring-cap, looking more like a bloke 
than the object of woman in bayside corduroy blazer’s gaze. He has stolen furniture 
tags, underwear and stocks. He is veneer. He repeats his stance on 36, quickly 
divorced, remarried to a brunette with a 12 year old son who wishes to kill himself, but 
instead, wears a sweater, which worn correctly for the bone-chilling conditions that 
the seafaring Norwegian’s once faced, functions as a semiotic cohesion to bond the 
grafted new family. The black couple on 43 has stood the test of time in Forest 
corduroy chinos and a velveteen holiday skirt. Without the child, they stride together in 
giddiness, and lift two found boys in Black Watch Tan  wearing a Dusty Olive Fair Isle vest, 
also available in Dark Camel, Charcoal, Heather and Cabin Red. Now they can 
blend into the party. These are the Soft Warm Slippers of forever, Signature Boots, 
and Insulated Sneakers of Italian craftsmanship, both versatile and rugged. They are 
shimmering Gortex and family values, slick Adirondack debt. They are Freeport 
down Parkas with retriever moments all a'cocoa and Penobscot collars of cold shorn 
fleece.








Jesse Loren is poet, thinker, journalist and teacher from Northern 

California. Her MFA is from UNO. She is also co-editor of Bombshells:

War Stories and Poems by Women on the Homefront and blogs at

http://bombshellandshelter.blogspot.com/