Poetry — April 16, 2014 12:19 — 1 Comment

Bomb – Jennifer Martelli

After they started the morphine drip after they took out the breathing tubes
and the nurses left us

I lay my head next to his on his pillow
for I’d heard that I’d never be so near to God as when He came for the dying.

One of us had to be high to be this close to each other–
when we danced at my wedding, there I was,

so drunk! And here my father lay,
an old undetonated bomb, and I, waiting crouching and cautious because

this was God’s last shot with me.
What time he passed, I can’t say, because the clocks moved back an hour.

Bio:

Jennifer Martelli was born and raised in Massachusetts, and graduated from Boston University and The Warren Wilson M.F.A. Program for Writers. She’s taught high school English as well as women’s literature at Emerson College in Boston.

Her work has appeared, or will appear, in the following publications: The Denver Quarterly, Folio, Calliope, Kalliope, The Mississippi Review, The Bellingham Review, Kindred, Bitterzoet, ZigZag Folio, The Inflectionist Review, Sugared Water, Slippery Elm, Tar River Review and Bop Dead City. She was a finalist for the Sue Elkind Poetry Prize and a recipient of the Massachusetts Cultural Council Grant in Poetry. Her chapbook, “Apostrophe,” was published in 2011 by BigTable Publishing Company.

One Comment

  1. Kevin McCarthy says:
    April 19, 2014 at 5:45 am

    You are one of my favorite poets. This baby cemented it.

    Reply

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What am I?

Bioluminescent eye
That sees by the shine
Of its own light. Lies

Blind me. I am the seventh human sense
And my stepchild,
Consequence;

Scientists can't find me.

Januswise I make us men;
Glamour
Was my image then—

Remind me:

The awful fall up off all fours
From the forest
To the hours…

Tick, Tock: Divine me.

-- Richard Kenney

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