when he tries to quit this time. He releases pungent rolls of
thunder from his mouth and lightning from his nostrils, fiery
voices from his allotted Marlboros, crushes the filters like
disappointment in the ashtray he keeps for now on his desk.
Then he drops them all into the cinders, building up like raked
leaves, screws the cap back on. For months every day he smokes
a cigarette, one less than the day before, until he is a platinum
cloud no longer, until he is assured that he will live past the age his
father, also a smoker but not a Smokender, died, until this ceremony he
follows is so long ago it is a brief, steely wisp of fog burning off in the sun.
–
Jen Karetnick is the author of 11 poetry collections, including Inheritance with a High Error Rate (winner of the 2022 Cider Press Book Award) and the chapbook What Forges Us Steel: The Judge Judy Poems (Alternating Current Press), both forthcoming. Co-founder/managing editor of SWWIM Every Day, she has recent work in The American Poetry Review, Missouri Review Poem of the Day, Notre Dame Review, The Penn Review, Ruminate, and Tar River Poetry.