by Jodie Filan
In quarantine, I dissect Ambition,
unanesthetized, naked and living on the bare
table before me. I use needles to aspirate fluid.
I punch through the skin of want want want,
biopsy directing my blade until it worms into
nerves. I send down a feed into the throat
to camera back Ambition’s unexpressed desires,
take them like stains under my lens to observe
their meiosis, watch the chromosomes entreaty
the thirsty equator, then anaphase to petition
the pole. Every day I set these delicate bridal
slides like china and crystal on linen to decide
if I should unregister for this dowry, splattered
at the burner, singed of hair, while under my eye,
these daughters—they multiply, they multiply.
Jen Karetnick is the author of five full-length poetry collections, including Hunger Until It’s Pain (Salmon Poetry, forthcoming spring 2023); The Burning Where Breath Used to Be (David Robert Books, forthcoming August 2020); and The Treasures That Prevail (Whitepoint Press, September 2016), finalist for the 2017 Poetry Society of Virginia Book Prize. She is also the author of five poetry chapbooks, including The Crossing Over (March 2019), winner of the 2018 Split Rock Review Chapbook Competition. Her poems have been awarded the Hart Crane Memorial Prize, the Romeo Lemay Poetry Prize, the Anna Davidson Rosenberg Prize, and two Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Prizes, among others. Her work appears recently or is forthcoming in Barrow Street, The Comstock Review, december, Michigan Quarterly Review, Terrain, Under a Warm Green Linden, and elsewhere. Co-founder and managing editor of SWWIM Every Day, Jen is currently a Deering Estate Artist-in-Residence. Find her on Twitter @Kavetchnik and Instagram @JenKaretnick, or see jkaretnick.com.
Jodie Filan is an artist in Saskatoon, born and raised. She has been published in RAR, Dark Ink press, Buddy Lit Zone, *82 Review, Aesthetica (Europe), Pithead Chapel, Nunum, Riza Press, Penultimate Peanut, unstamatic, The Raw Art Review (Spring 2019), High Shelf Press, Please See Me, among others . Recently Ms Filan also placed 6th in Fusion arts 4th annual B+W competition (May 2019) www.facebook.com/jodiefilanyxe