Dissolution of the Soviet Union
by Jennifer Martelli
The day the bald man was deposed, my friend overdosed and died. The sky was
yellow brown as the wheat in the Midwest
where one of three storms rolled in from. The Soviet had a beet red birthmark
on his forehead, in the shape of a South American country
and some said he purposely sank Mother Russia, in the way some said my friend
shot one bag too many on purpose. But I know—I thought hard
about this on the way to the store to buy fat white candles for the storm—how her lips
were cigarette-creased like mine. That day,
I thought only of my friend and I hoped the high was a good one and took her home
safe. There is always too much life, too much, it could
tear down walls and drown you, there’s so much, you can never measure it right.
Jennifer Martelli is a graduate of The Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers. Her poetry has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and the Sue Elkind Poetry Prize; she is also a recipient of a Massachusetts Cultural Council Grant in Poetry. Her chapbook, Apostrophe, was published in 2010 by BigTable Publishing.
by Jennifer Martelli
The day the bald man was deposed, my friend overdosed and died. The sky was
yellow brown as the wheat in the Midwest
where one of three storms rolled in from. The Soviet had a beet red birthmark
on his forehead, in the shape of a South American country
and some said he purposely sank Mother Russia, in the way some said my friend
shot one bag too many on purpose. But I know—I thought hard
about this on the way to the store to buy fat white candles for the storm—how her lips
were cigarette-creased like mine. That day,
I thought only of my friend and I hoped the high was a good one and took her home
safe. There is always too much life, too much, it could
tear down walls and drown you, there’s so much, you can never measure it right.
Jennifer Martelli is a graduate of The Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers. Her poetry has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and the Sue Elkind Poetry Prize; she is also a recipient of a Massachusetts Cultural Council Grant in Poetry. Her chapbook, Apostrophe, was published in 2010 by BigTable Publishing.