Rub

Jen Karetnick

Sow the meat with spice mix. Quilt it 
with salt and cinnamon and cayenne
like fields viewed via a plane window. 
Then massage, with heel of thumb and slap-
flat of palm, into the cold phlox of veins. 
When the enzymes give, enjoy the change 

against the skin, mollification of membranes, 
as it relaxes into a shape not formerly known 
to itself: cartilage re-seaming, joints calving, 
bones caving beneath for later excavations. 
This won’t materialize all at once. This kind 
of bbq defloration takes time, essential oils,

zeal. This, once so coaxed, there’s no returning
from. When touch is spare to start with, a rump 
roast or skirt steak is a quality textile. Linen. Silk. 
Some flesh showcases joyous floral prints, ready to
wear. Other kinds turn us into tailors as we measure,
re-measure, shearing them out of tattered tablecloth.

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. She is also the author of Hunger Until It's Pain (Salmon Poetry, forthcoming spring 2023) in addition to six other collections. Long-listed for the international 2021 Alpine Fellowship Writing Prize, a finalist for the 2021 Jack Grapes Poetry Prize, and recipient of a Merit Award in the Atlanta Review 2021 International Poetry Competition, she has won the Tiferet Writing Contest for Poetry, Split Rock Review Chapbook Competition, Hart Crane Memorial Prize, and Anna Davidson Rosenberg Prize, among others. 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 restaurant cirtic, lifestyle journalist, and author of four cookbooks, four guidebooks, and more. See jkaretnick.com.