Jen Karetnick: “The Sound of Zero Copula”

THE SOUND OF ZERO COPULA

The end doesn’t come with rattlesnake breath.

Sometimes it sneaks in with silence its voice.

Haven’t we known that the song is a myth,

that swans protect life with mostly a hiss?

The tunes we expel are never our choice.

The end doesn’t come with rattlesnake breath.

The rest between beats is its own small death,

a pause for the pump to prime its hot sauce.

Haven’t we known that the song is a myth?

The brash illnesses that muzzle us brief

others on how to indulge in this vice.

The end doesn’t come with rattlesnake breath,

the blare of early warning systems. Thief

of all sound who cuts alarms to the house.

Haven’t we known that the song is a myth?

No flutes. No horns. No soundtrack to bequeath.

And this, too: We admit ourselves wordless.

The end doesn’t come with rattlesnake breath.

Haven’t we known that the song is a myth?

Jen Karetnick is the author of five full-length poetry collections, including Hunger Until It’s Pain (Salmon Poetry, forthcoming in 2023); The Burning Where Breath Used to Be (David Robert Books, forthcoming in August 2020); and The Treasures That Prevail (Whitepoint Press, 2016), finalist for the 2017 Poetry Society of Virginia Book Prize. She is also the author of five poetry chapbooks, including The Crossing Over (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.

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