Jen Karetnick
LITTLE GEESE SWIMMING IN A SEA OF BONES
The sacrum is an ocarina, four
holes in two columns and a mouthpiece.
Triangulate Turkey, Italy, Greece,
and you can put your mouth to the fissures
of 7,000 irregular
parts of rising axial skeletons,
play ancient tunes through chambers like cones
that resonate through narrow, entire
cavities. They’re easy for beginners
to identify but are presented
only in adult sizes, the plates fused
after the second octave is heard.
Until then, they’re still in assembly:
myriad jigsaw of soluble toys.
A Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, Jen Karetnick is the author of seven poetry books, most recently American Sentencing (Winter Goose Publications, 2016), and the eco-feminist, post-climate change collection, The Treasures That Prevail (Whitepoint Press, 2016), finalist for the 2017 Poetry Society of Virginia Book Award. She lives in Miami, where she co-directs the reading series SWWIM (@SWWIMmiami).