In the clean part of the house
I can sit and pretend my life
Is well-organized and dust free
Some people have drawers or closets
Where messes get shoved out-of-sight
Amateurs
I have whole rooms,
Corridors, not ready for company
Just this summer,
I bought an entire house
So I can vacation from the one I keep too full
Jane Yevgenia Muschenetz is a Ukrainian-born, Jewish author and artist who fled the Soviet regime as a child. Two time winner of the California Press Women Communications Prize in Creative Verse, Jane has appeared in KPBS Midday Edition, Spoken Word Paris, MIT Technology Review, and in numerous noteworthy publications. Recognized in 2023 for Excellence in Poetry Performance by the County of San Diego, Jane's additional honors include the 2024 Poetry Collection of the Year Award from San Diego Writers Festival and the 2022 Good Life Review Honeybee Poetry Prize. She is the author of All the Bad Girls Wear Russian Accents (Kelsay Books, 2023) and POWER POINT (Sheila-Na-Gig Editions, 2024), which combines dark humor, statistical analysis and visual poetics to interrogate societal inequalities. Jane is also the “butter half” of the husband-and-wife team behind the food and photography blog, Table M. Jane earned her MBA from MIT's Sloan School of Business and her BA in Political Science from UCSD.