Jen Karetnick

In 1898, [Julia] Tuttle fell ill with apparent meningitis. Plans were made to move her to
Asheville, North Carolina, by rail for treatment, but her condition deteriorated before
she could be transported. She died on September 14, 1898, at age 49.

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The alligator that ate my spine

stretches its limbs into my

scapulas and hips, swishes

the skeletal muscle of its

tail, warms its primordial

blood with the blaze in my

brain. The doctor asks how it

slithered in, when it began

to feast, what have I done to

remove it—questions I can’t

satisfy any more than

I can nod yes or shake my

head no, my neck armored by

scutes. My children don’t believe

the reptile has made its home

in my flesh but they know less

about this land than I do,

how it gets under your skin,

how it grips and burns, festers

thoughts into fevers that can’t

be treated. So many times

I thought I would leave this earth

unable to be more than

bait for predation, only

to find myself as the steel

laid down for trains, iron girding

buildings skyward, even as

they make plans to move us to

Asheville for separation.

But I suspect the gator

will not give up its prey that

easily. Vertiginous,

I’m rolling with its hunger,

sweat covering me like mud

scooped up from the Ever-Glades,

my skin scaled into violet

patches, an evening sky

filled with clouds growing closer

until all becomes the dark

and no moon rises for light.

I sense in this September

steam a day of difference,

the gator’s roar echoing

inside my skull like a bad

dream, my air its conscious breath

that flows on a one-way path

the way a bird’s does, held for

under water, each session

practice for the next, at last.