Two Poems by Jen Karetnick

 

Marching Band Perp Walk

You never forget the way
you’re taught to tread:

Gaze straight ahead. Limbs
on alert. Feet barely lifted,

a watery shuffle. Toe to heel,
toe to heel, a needle through

the arch, threading the seams
of the path in front of you

like it’s a uniform too good
for everyday wear. No slouch,

no saunter, no shimmy. Keep
the deviations only in your mind,

expression neutral as midfield,
hands shackled to instruments

of goodwill, visible to the ones
who sit above. When you reach

your place, raise your proof
to your lips, inflate the dome

at the base of the bags flattening
your chest, and put it all on blast.

 

 

How to Get Away with Slinging a Céline

Start with a wealth of Zottman curls
which you thought were an Influencer’s hairstyle
until your trainer said they’re the necessary
bicep prep in order to pronate or supinate
like a defense mechanism the double handles
of the medium Phantom Tote that weighs
as much as an emotional support Chihuahua

It’s true that a Céline is a barbell to flex
even before you put in the pooch to take
to Whole Foods where you spend the equivalent
of your last psych wellness visit on açai bowls
and vegan cheeses infused with remote
air-dried ingredients that influx nostrils
with whiffs worse than those from unexpressed

anal glands      The trick is to maintain form
even when reaching for Champagne grapes
as easily bruised as a mother-in-law’s feelings
with the redundant “baby calfskin” that’s the size
of your own drummed torso      After all it is called
luggage and could likely stop well not a bullet
In your world there’s one kind of Bullet and it makes

smoothies like TruGreen lawns      And ftw it would
only get in the way of a serrated blade should there be
an incident near your two-top at that Salt Bae place
where of course you’re friends with the chef who flicks
grains from his fingers like mummified findings
excavated from the cartilaginous pyramid of his nose
(But be sure you Insta it in slo-mo anyway)

Seriously you just might have a chance throwing
the Phantom at such a marauder of ribs the way
Annalise Keating lobs hers on the table
in her lecture hall as if it’s a plate meant to break
but instead skips like a stone on the leathery vest
of a weed-choked pond      The wingspan alone
could shuto-uke a whole quiver of Laguiole

With one swipe ricochet them to back to your own
open floor-plan kitchen for handwashing
by the housekeeper or into the corks
of the Screaming Eagle you’re on the elite access
mailing list for and that you store in the cellar
under the original Oliver Gal in the consistent
set chill that marks your every average day

 

The winner of the 2018 Split Rock Review Chapbook Competition for The Crossing Over (May 2019), Jen Karetnick is the author of three full-length poetry collections, including The Treasures That Prevail (Whitepoint Press, September 2016), finalist for the 2017 Poetry Society of Virginia Book Prize. Her work appears recently in Glass: A Journal of Poetry, The Hamilton Stone Review, JAMA, Lunch Ticket, Michigan Quarterly Review, and The Missouri Review, and new work is forthcoming in BARNHOUSE, Cider Press Review, The Laurel Review, Ovenbird, Salamander, and Tampa Review. She is co-founder/co-editor of the daily online literary journal, SWWIM Every Day (www.swwim.org). She works as the dining critic for MIAMI Magazine and as a freelance lifestyle journalist and a trade book author. Her fourth cookbook is forthcoming in May 2019.