Exiting Jenna

after Sharon Olds’ Saturn

Thursday’s yawn, and the jaw bone dislodges:

woken peristalsis like the floral throb of eels.

Something comes, rung by rung up the throat

then a leap for the uvula’s slick.

There is nothing more fateful

than unfeast, gut’s law— 

Goya’s eyes, a god scared by his own

jumbo whites.  Now I stream through my own teeth, unbellied;

smell the estuary gush, recall her name.

You would have seen a small bed, and

a girl. This is just what she longed for:

the rupture, return.

Honorable Mention for the 2020 Small Orange Emerging Woman Poet Honor

Jenna Lanzaro is a poet and teacher based in Jersey City. Currently an MFA candidate in Poetry at New York University as a Writers in the Public Schools Fellow, she taught at a local middle school for six years prior. When she’s not writing, Jenna enjoys hiking with her cat, Tarzan.