Forever Jung

by Jennifer Martelli

At a little bistro across from the beach, my friend gave her name for a table: Young, she said, party of two. The host asked, Do you spell that with a Y or a J? I loved that it mattered. That we were all in the collective dream. Long ago, when I was pregnant, I had a therapist who was a Jungian. He laughed that my son would be the Archer, a Sa℥, he said, drawing out that soft G that could be a J. Like most intellectual men, he wore a turtleneck and elbow-patched blazer in falling leaf colors: aged wines and golds. My friend—Young—asked if she should see a therapist. Her family was small, yet caused such pain. I could see the Civil War statue over her shoulder, out the window, where it was raw. The sea had sprayed over the wall to the sidewalk; off-shore storms stirring up a red pulp that dried on the ground. I’ll tell you, all of this came true: my son was born in Sagittarius and I would dream of archers, of letters shaped like hooks. I would dream of buying my friend sweet hot coffee.

Linden Leaves

by Jennifer Martelli

My mother’s final roommate on the memory floor was Tina, whose son brought Italian playing cards to lay on her lap: angel, world, moon, moors, gourds. The sundowning made her and my mother see shapes in the linden leaves: shadows, faces, ghosts, old lovers. The nurse would close the shades before dusk fell, before they would walk the halls with dinner trays of pureed food: what was once green beans, what was once cows’ liver, what was beets, what was kidney beans. Before long, he dealt a hand to me, too. I lied, said I could play tarocchino but lost my queen, my cavalier, my jack, my fool. Never had time to learn the rules. I ran out the clock, the dusk, the cups, the linden leaves, too.

Jennifer Martelli is the author of The Queen of Queens, selected as a “Must Read” by the Massachusetts Center for the Book, and My Tarantella, also selected as a “Must Read,” awarded an Honorable Mention from the Italian-American Studies Association, and named as a finalist for the Housatonic Book Award. She is the author of the chapbooks All Things are Born to Change Their Shapes, winner of the Small Harbor Press open reading, In the Year of Ferraro from Nixes Mates, and After Bird, winner of the Grey Book Press open reading. Her work has appeared in The Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day, Poetry, The Tahoma Literary Review, Scoundrel Time, Verse Daily, Iron Horse Review, and elsewhere. Jennifer Martelli has twice received grants from the Massachusetts Cultural Council for her poetry. She is co-poetry editor for MER. Find her at www.jennmartelli.com.