Poetry by Jennifer Martelli

     Drew Stefani CC




American Anemone
​

My friend can grow anything in her backyard.

We sit on her porch and eat olives out of a jar.

The days are growing longer. Now, at five, it’s still light.

Soon, she says, the crocus and the bloodroot will bloom.

The American anemone, too. 

Just one more week for this too-warm February

and then, before we know it, the vernal equinox.

Spring is hard for me, I tell her. 

I’m unhappy for no reason a lot, and anxious,

angry all the time—I drop things and break them.

The oily salt stings a small cut on my fingertip. 

It’s the light, she says, and the wind. There’s too much

to see, it comes at you so fast it feels like panic. 

​



​Sandy’s Electric Griddle


Once, at a meeting in the golden basement
of St. James Catholic Church, my friend Sandy shared
he believed we’re always moving forward, even, 
he said, if we use again, we’re still going in the right direction.

Do you believe you have a soul? Do you believe it’s always moving forward?

He loved (in no order I’m aware): his brass alto
saxophone, ballet, he loved being clean,
mean women. 

                                              When he left to die,
he stopped by my house, asked if he could store an electric griddle,
here, in my basement. We smoked and I said

don’t leave, Sandy, stay here where we love you
and can help. 

                            Do you think I’m foolish? To cling to and hide this greasy scratched thing?

After his funeral, his ex-girlfriend called me for the griddle: I lied, 
said I gave it away to someone who needed it, gave it away for free.

​

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Jennifer Martelli is the author of The Queen of Queens, winner of the Italian American Studies Association Book Award and named a “Must Read” by the Massachusetts Center for the Book and My Tarantella, also a “Must Read,” and finalist for the Housatonic Book Award. Her work has appeared in Poetry, The Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day, The Tahoma Literary Review, Folio, Jet Fuel Review, Tab: A Journal of Poetry, and elsewhere. Jennifer Martelli has twice received grants for poetry from the Massachusetts Cultural Council and is co-poetry editor of MER.