Jen Karetnick

When Judge Judy Asks If You’re on Psychotropic Meds

Admit that it’s been anti-depressants for decades,
part of your morning cocktail that you down
with a bolus of Diet Coke left over from the night
before when you swallowed a handful of other pills—
some the size of thumbs, others so small they dissolve
in the fizz before the epiglottis closes. You’ve become
a master at cradling them in your palm like a hurt
butterfly or a lizard saved from the cats, then tossing
the lot back in a shot. Funny how you didn’t know
you had the sads until they no longer threw you

into corners and under covers. Funnier how many
physicians prescribed them for the symptoms you would
discover were from autoimmune disease. Chronically
you’re a cosmic joke. A laugh riot. Or just a wink
from the universe, which must also be a patriarchy, set
up to discount. If you could collect from all the years
the pain that has been overwritten like an insurance
policy and place it before a judge, even a female one,
would it be proof enough? Or would you be cast again
an unreliable narrator, steeped in the tonic that holds you in?

Out Here in Television Land

I live in a geography of unfitted sheets
giving rise to the huddled hills of cats
and a drying gorge of Diet Coke the crumbling
infrastructure patched with Pop-Tart macadam

Population of one I am a permanent resident
where the minority is also entering majority
Government: Twitterocracy Main agricultural product:
Popcorn Climate: Hot flashes 24/7

The education system though truly is excellent
I learn about the vaginal dryness awaiting me
and pouty men with penises shaped like carrots
stuck in the vegetable bin for too long

Every day at 4 pm Judge Judy breaks the fourth wall
to enlighten me further about not keeping pit bulls
who are marital infidelity in the shape of puncture wounds
None ever bites just once

I'm also taught about the difference between liability
and collision insurance and how new cars lose value
like women once they leave the lot
This information will surely come in handy

even though the economy of Television Land
is at worst depressed and at best run by HD DVR
and I have to save available drive time for steering
this depreciating body into the shower

before he returns and ask what I haven’t done
all day and why the dog shit and why the ketchup-stuck
dishes and why the laundry piled like guilt
and why and why and why

Contract Law, to the Letter

A room with a shut door, these four corners and what’s contained therein. Clauses arranged as furniture. A décor of words. This is all you have.

Bluebeard, Gilles de Rais. The Brothers Grimm. They knew to hide the secrets in the room, leave the key visible, blood to capture prints on it like ink.

Consider that terms must be struck like autumn leaves from a tree. What a branch regrets, the leaf will never see.

Debt and covenant begin the act of trespass, the breaching of walls with tidal surge. Apogee to perigree. Micro to super moon.

Each party has a duty to wear those suits that are tailored to measurement. Discard even one item and it is exposure to the root elements of torts, naked as toddlers and kings.

For damage to be incurred, a wrongful act must strike like a poem with consequence.

Grammatical errors do not honor the etiquette of the letter. Nouns and verbs chafe to agree, rub together like tempers or hands.

Homer held up the handshake as a heroic prop.

Insanity of either party terminates this offer. This offer terminates insanity of either party. Either party terminates this offer of insanity.

Juris doctorate. Judith. Jurisdiction. Judith. Jurisprudence. Judith. Judge. Judith.