blueberry-rhubarb is the rage, a butter-
crusted sweet-tart confection
dreamed up by Rumspringa teens.
Eat up! they encourage.
Forget about your waistlines for once. But
gut research notes you also have a brain.
How do you strike a mind-body balance
if you can’t control your appetite?
Jezebel’s spirit gives you this power.
Kin to corsets and self-incrimination,
liturgical baking is a new culinary art—God’s
mercy pleaded for with every pass of the rolling pin,
not meant for the pastry chef who is faint of heart
or whose arteries are occluded from cholesterol.
Pâte brisée is the dietary culprit here.
Quite the devilish dough, it’s an easy
recipe to make with a food processor, that
savior appliance, the dough blades a deliverance.
Tasting this heaven-sent dessert is salvation—
until chest pains wedge themselves like a pie server, so
vexing they require an emergency visit to the hospital,
which results in stents placed in two arteries.
X-rays indicate more diagnostic tests ahead. Meanwhile,
you take the nurses some Mennonite pie,
zested with lime and garnished with gratitude.
The Jen Karetnick/Jen Litt poetry collaboration began with a shared sense of humor and a love for food and poetic forms. We first met at the last in-person Palm Beach Poetry Festival in 2020. Out of respect and the need for connection, we began to talk about poetry, and each other’s work, conversations that now take place over delicious meals. Jen L used Jen K’s invented ekocento poetry form to write a poem for her current manuscript, and Jen K read Jen L’s poetry collection, Strictly from Hunger, the title an idiom meaning “tolerable in desperate circumstances.” Jen K then invited Jen L to read for her non-profit organization, SWWIM (Supporting Women Writers in Miami), which produces a poetry series at The Betsy Hotel on South Beach. The shared focus on the complexity of emotional and physical sustenance prompted us to write together in form, mostly about food and dining, which is a communal human experience—as is poetry.