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Home / Bulletin 3 / The Crisis Is a Border

Jun 28 2021

The Crisis Is a Border

By Jen Karetnick

Poetry

ASP Bulletin | July 2, 2021

< before next >

Asterisms of migrants approach in

bands, they proclaim, stretching out like

constellations that haven’t been

discovered yet, or are considered too

early in the process to be named.

 

Folks, we have always accosted

grafts of land like this: Whoever

holds it—by force turned into

indelible tradition—gets to

justify what happens to it. Yet after, say,

 

Kristellnacht, which Jew knew to

leave first? When was the exact

moment that one said: enough,

never again? What collections of

omens or actions solidify into

 

policy, precisely timed as

quartz wristwatches sewn into hems,

straps of gold for trading out of

terrible situations? Now the

undercarriage rusts, those same Jews

 

verbose with support for building

walls in regions already inhospitable.

Xenogenies against the new “plague”

yielding the worst results at Seder, they

zip-tie our tongues with ancient arguments.

Asterisms of migrants approach in

bands, they proclaim, stretching out like

constellations that haven’t been

discovered yet, or are considered too

early in the process to be named.

 

Folks, we have always accosted

grafts of land like this: Whoever

holds it—by force turned into

indelible tradition—gets to

justify what happens to it. Yet after, say,

 

Kristellnacht, which Jew knew to

leave first? When was the exact

moment that one said: enough,

never again? What collections of

omens or actions solidify into

 

policy, precisely timed as

quartz wristwatches sewn into hems,

straps of gold for trading out of

terrible situations? Now the

undercarriage rusts, those same Jews

 

verbose with support for building

walls in regions already inhospitable.

Xenogenies against the new “plague”

yielding the worst results at Seder, they

zip-tie our tongues with ancient arguments.

Jen1

< before next >

Jen Karetnick's most recent collection, The Burning Where Breath Used to Be (David Robert Books, 2020), is an Eric Hoffer Poetry Category Finalist and a Kops-Fetherling Honorable Mention. Her fifth full-length book is forthcoming from Salmon Poetry in 2023. The co-founder and managing editor of SWWIM Every Day, she has work appearing recently or forthcoming in The Comstock Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, The Shore, and Under a Warm Green Linden. See jkaretnick.com.

Written by Alan Squire Publishing · Categorized: Bulletin 3

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