*

Jennifer Martelli lives and writes in Massachusetts. She is an associate editor for The Compassion Project. Martelli’s first full-length collection of poetry, The Uncanny Valley, is forthcoming from Big Table Publishing Co. www.jennifermartelli.com

Jennifer Martelli .

Belshazzar’s Feast

An old woman says her rosary while she watches Lawrence Welk,

her feet raised on the naugahyde ottoman. Black onyx beads,

moon glow plastic ones, silver plate and garnet beads, one set carved

from a tree in a grove in Israel: some dangle, some are coiled

into a red pleather snap envelope. Xanax the size of one bead

tucked under her tongue to keep her calm

while she dies. Her eyes move back and forth: the writing is on the wall.

I take the rosaries in my fist so I don’t get bit.

Now they hang still on my own bedpost. A Persian cat howls from the porch

below my window. She leaps for the moths and the glow worms

that dangle then morph into more moths. The Persian crosses the street, cuts

her territory in half. A storm took down a giant tree and all the wires

running through it. The tree stands black, branchless, split

almost through to the sidewalk. The girls outside are lithe and do handstands,

scissors. The whole neighborhood stinks of burning plastic funk

and it stings our eyes: We all look like we’re crying or high.

— Jennifer Martelli

*