Odd True Fact
It only makes sense that one sister
will be the last sister. I swore
not to leave junk, like my parents did:
black pocket combs in a cracked mug,
a pig-shaped oak carving board, a tin
colander punched all over with stars
to let the hot pasta water flow through
with a hiss into the sink. One sister
will see all the funerals, one will have
neither sister at hers. A friend posted this
odd, true fact on Facebook. The deaths
of my parents were nine months apart,
a full-term pregnancy. How we walked
through their house—each room, each
closet, all floors—with dark green Glad
trash bags, their mouths open, loose,
and hungry. Throw it in! Throw it all in!
we’d yell. The oxidized brass tie clip
embossed with the White House, stainless
steel tweezers, kitchen and pinking shears.
Jennifer Martelli has received fellowships from The Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Monson Arts, and the Massachusetts Cultural Council. Her work has appeared in The Academy of American Poets Poem-A-Day, Poetry, Best of the Net Anthology, Braving the Body Anthology, Verse Daily, Plume, The Tahoma Literary Review, and elsewhere. She is the author of Psychic Party Under the Bottle Tree, The Queen of Queens, which won the Italian American Studies Association Book Award and was shortlisted for the Massachusetts Book Award, and My Tarantella, which was also shortlisted for the Massachusetts Book Award and named finalist for the Housatonic Book Award. Jennifer Martelli is co-poetry editor for MER. www.jennmartelli.com