All around my sister and my nephew and my niece: Texas,
terra cotta and ladybird blue.
Come home, I say to her, there’s a house on my street
you could move right into. My son
drums fast as a machine gun shoots,
drum skins split the way a half moon
splits in the sky. Massachusetts wants to hook
onto the Atlantic, pull itself east, one
hour out of the country.
Last night, on the Cape, nothing of this day
happened yet: I was far away from Sutherland Springs or closer to the bullet
curve. All around me: night, ocean, tumor, even the air
was midnight blue. The moon was a platinum-dyed
psychic. My sister REM sleeping, deep in a dry heart, in the heat.
Some people laid out their church clothes.
READ MORE
Texas church gunman had threatened his mother-in-law, who attended services there, officials say [The Washington Post]
Swarm-Mind [Poets Reading the News]
Could New England actually change time zones – and what happens if it does? [Boston]
Jennifer Martelli lives in Massachusetts. She is the author of two poetry collections, The Uncanny Valley and After Bird.
Art by Kurt Cole Eidsvig, entitled “Slow Dancing to Open Arms.”
