The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Inheritance with a High Error Rate by Jen Karetnick


This selection, chosen by guest editor john compton, is from Inheritance with a High Error Rate by Jen Karetnick (Cider Press Review 2024).

@Death Follows Me on Twitter

                                                          From a real, defunct Twitter account

@Death tells me our relationship is complicated, and wants to
simplify things.

@Death tells me about “soul midwives” and “death doulas,”
flashlight-armed ushers to that final throne.

@Death tells me to decide now between a 12-piece jazz band and
Rush’s 2112 for my service.

@Death tells me that wearing a Fitbit may help me die better:
10,000 steps toward a daily end.

@Death tells me, on the day Wimbledon begins, the history
behind the sudden-death tiebreak. There used to be a
lingering-death tiebreak, too, but that was put to death.

@Death tells me the florists known for reliability and fair pricing.
@Death does not know the scent of flowers aches my temples,
throbs my veins.

@Death tells me the statistics on selfies: officially five times more
fatal than shark attacks.

@Death tells me jokes, like the one about the man who invented
autocorrect dying. “Restaurant in Peace,” @Death says.

@Death tells me, when the U.S. women win their fourth World
Cup, that captains of losing teams were traditionally sacrificed.

@Death wants to know if I will put down my surviving pets when
I die.

@Death is feeling ancient Egyptian, but walks like a cop in a donut
shop.

@Death wants me to take one last rum safari in Jamaica, drink
mamajuana with the locals.

@Death tells me that “dying on holiday does happen.” Presumably
by selfie.

@Death tells me lines from obituaries, such as “Freeda sledgehammered
every rule of healthy eating to obtain a nice long
life.”

@Death tells me about direct cremation, how I can be turned into
ash without a priest. @Death does not know that I’m Jewish,
despite skin etched into graphic anecdotes.

@Death tells me stories, like the one about the golden retriever
trained to bring tissues to mourners at a funeral home.

@Death asks if I’ve seen Michael Jackson around. @Death is not
old enough to ask about Elvis.

@Death posts links for alternative hearses. My coffin can be
carried by a Harley Davidson sidecar, Volkswagen Campervan,
horse-drawn carriage, fire engine, vintage truck, bicycle, or
Land Rover capable of an off-road detour.

@Death tells me grief will compound chronic pain, speed up an
illness.

@Death tells me to appoint a digital executor to care for my social
media estate.

@Death tells me how I can be unburied in a coffin made of willow
or bamboo that biodegrades so that my bones will be available
to the earth, my reception embraceable as limbs. Death does
not know that I live at sea level, where mangroves snarl the
sand.

@Death tells me how I do and do not feel, twice per day,
sometimes three times.

@Death tells me to be #DeathPositive, but so often the numbers
say otherwise.

A 2024 National Poetry Series finalist, Jen Karetnick is the author of 12 collections of poetry, including Inheritance with a High Error Rate (January 2024), the winner of the 2022 Cider Press Review Book Award. Forthcoming books include What Forges Us Steel: The Judge Judy Poems (Alternating Current Press, 2025) and Domiciliary (Sheila-Na-Gig Editions, 2026). Her work has won the Sweet: Lit Poetry Prize, Tiferet Writing Contest for Poetry, Split Rock Review Chapbook Competition, Hart Crane Memorial Prize, and Anna Davidson Rosenberg Prize, among other honors, and received support from the Vermont Studio Center, Roundhouse Foundation, Wassaic Project, Write On, Door County, Wildacres Retreat, Mother’s Milk Artist Residency, Centrum, Artists in Residence in the Everglades, and elsewhere. The co-founder and managing editor of SWWIM Every Day, she has recent or forthcoming work in Atlanta Review, Cimarron Review, NELLE, Pleiades, Plume, Shenandoah, Sixth Finch, Verse Daily, and elsewhere.


john compton (b. 1987) is a gay poet who lives in kentucky with his husband josh and their dogs, cats and mice. his latest full length book is my husband holds my hand because i may drift away & be lost forever in the vortex of a crowded store published with Flowersong Press (dec 2024); his latest chapbook is melancholy arcadia published with Harbor Editions (april 2024).

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