July 29~ JACK CARENZA

Today at SHINE, we putting the spotlight on Florida-based writer, Jack Carenza. Jack brings us three poignant poems:  She works nights--, Self-Checkout, and Forest Road 26. Thank you, Jack, for being a part of SHINE poetry series!

She works nights--

labeling blood
tubes in a basement
clinic where elevators
nictate like jet-lagged planets.

At home, she steeps
hibiscus in worn porcelain,
knowing reds should
stem from petals,
not apheresis.

Now thirty-eight,
she’s perfected
the art of staying
seated after
disappointment.

A neighbor practices
trombone from the terrace,
the same three notes--
loose cutlery tumbling
down the bulkhead.

Every Thursday at 3:30
she calls her mother
and lies with LinkedIn-
level puffery:

yes, eating healthy

yes, sleeping plenty

yes, loves me tenderly

The lead physician told her
stress starts in the liver--
algae bloom in stagnant liquor.

She pictures Midori
over ice.

The tea cools.
A thin skin spans it,
delicate as tempera.

She remembers being eleven,
pinning Chelan cherries
to chapped lips
to look glamorous
for no one.

Now, glamour means
paying rent by the first,
ignoring lewd 2 a.m. texts,
peeling a Satsuma
in late fall.

The Shetland pony beside her
cup is a Tuesday table
scrap. She means
to scrape it off,
to sketch it over,
but she needn’t beat
a dead horse.

She has loved men
with dazzling opinions
on thumbtacks.

Men who owned
one butter knife.

Men who said
you worry too perfectly.

Self-Checkout

Forest Road 26

Jack Carenza is a South Florida–based copywriter whose lyrical works explore memory, history, and their movement through time and space. His poems carry a keen attention to sound, shaped by years as a hip-hop artist. Jack’s poetry has appeared in Constellations Journal of Poetry and Fiction and Inscape Literary Journal, with upcoming pieces in the engine(idling) and Sunday Mornings at the River.

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