by Jennifer Martelli

—after Lucie Brock-Broido


I have the boniest backhands, thick veins, too,

that can take a needle, fill tubes of blood. I could make

your lip bleed and swell with a fast, well-aimed rap.

My rings are loose. I wrap band-aids on their metal backs.

I believed if I prayed hard enough—blanched my palms

from pressing them with all my faithful weight—no one—

no one—would ever die. Now, I only believe in the world,

and the sound a backhand makes on front teeth. What

is it in me that needs to tell you this? I’ve gone a full

season and haven’t lost a glove. They’ve stayed cuffed

into each other in a sack deep in my hall closet, kept

warm by loyalty and by the copper pipe along the floor.

I would love for my hands to learn to play a waltz, to shadow-

mime winter birds, for my hands to transform into,

on the one hand, your heart, on the other hand, my heart.

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Jennifer Martelli has received fellowships from The Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and the Massachusetts Cultural Council. Her work has appeared in Academy of American Poets Poem-A-Day, Poetry, and Best of the Net Anthology. She is the author of Psychic Party Under the Bottle Tree and The Queen of Queens, which won the Italian American Studies Association Book Award and was shortlisted for the Massachusetts Book Award. Jennifer Martelli is co-poetry editor for MER.

by Jennifer Martelli

lay spread eagle on the sidewalk
bleeding out state after state: airless blue deep red.

(The men will come with chalk to trace her shape: white edges like hooks,
some like small penises, or a single mitten, and some crawl through the desert
and under a river.)

Three times the country screamed:
the first scream, an old car’s shrill brakes;
the second, a lovers’ spat, but the country knew the man who slapped her around, perhaps
she asked for it;
third, could’ve been a dog in heat or in want.

And the lit windows were spaces between jack o’lantern teeth, backlit by a fat candle
nestled inside the scraped-out shell.

Honest to god, it could’ve been stopped. Rain-

storm after rainstorm barely washed the blood off this crime scene:
off the hot top, off the granite, off the pitch.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________

Jennifer Martelli is the author of My Tarantella (Bordighera Press), as well as the chapbook, After Bird (Grey Book Press, winner of the open reading, 2016). Her work has appeared in Verse Daily, The Sonora Review, and Iron Horse Review (winner, photo finish contest). Martelli is the recipient of the Massachusetts Cultural Council Grant in poetry. She is co-poetry editor for the Mom Egg Review.

by Jennifer Martelli

lay spread eagle on the sidewalk

bleeding out state after state: airless blue deep red.

(The men will come with chalk to trace her shape: white edges like hooks,

some like small penises, or a single mitten, and some crawl through the desert

and under a river.)

Three times the country screamed:

the first scream, an old car’s shrill brakes;

the second, a lovers’ spat, but the country knew the man who slapped her around, perhaps

          she asked for it;

third, could’ve been a dog in heat or in want.

And the lit windows were spaces between jack o’lantern teeth, backlit by a fat candle

nestled inside the scraped-out shell.

Honest to god, it could’ve been stopped. Rain-

storm after rainstorm barely washed the blood off this crime scene:

off the hot top, off the granite, off the pitch.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________

Jennifer Martelli is the author of MyTarantella (Bordighera Press), as well as the chapbook, After Bird (Grey Book Press, winner of the open reading, 2016). Her work has appeared or will appear in Verse Daily, The Sonora Review, and Iron Horse Review (winner, Photo Finish contest). Jennifer Martelli is the recipient of the Massachusetts Cultural Council Grant in Poetry. She is co-poetry editor for The Mom Egg Review.