JEN KARETNICK

Achilles’ Pathology

Bees nuzzle the synovial pistils of my ankles with
abandon, looting the broken-down nexuses for
 
the tools of their trade. Stalks and stigma swollen with rust,
weeping, these hinges carriage me, their springs un-scrubbed by a
 
bottlebrush. For some, the body is an untended banyan
tree, allowing the extremities to go way off-book,
 
dive-bomb the ground, everything feeding on everything else.
The brain’s edgy matter can only direct so much, attempt to
 
pool or protect its resources. When I was dropped
at birth into the waters that should have armored me,
 
dusk grabbed me up with both hands, kept me like a hive. 

Jen Karetnick's fourth full-length book is The Burning Where Breath Used to Be (David Robert Books, September 2020), a CIPA EVVY winner, an Eric Hoffer Poetry Category Finalist, and a Kops Fetherling Honorable Mention. Long-listed for the international 2021 Alpine Fellowship Writing Prize and winner of the Tiferet Writing Contest for Poetry, Split Rock Review Chapbook Competition, Hart Crane Memorial Prize, and Anna Davidson Rosenberg Prize, she frequently interrogates issues of climate change, disability, and faith. Co-founder and managing editor of SWWIM Every Day, she has had work in The Comstock Review, december, Michigan Quarterly Review, The Missouri Review Poem of the Week, Poet Lore, Terrain.org, and elsewhere. Based in Miami, she works as a lifestyle journalist and is the author of four cookbooks, four guidebooks, and more. See jkaretnick.com.