Hand Apologia

By Jennifer Martelli

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            —after Lucie Brock-Broido


I have the boniest backhands, thick veins, too,

that can take a needle, fill tubes of blood. I could make

your lip bleed and swell with a fast, well-aimed rap.

My rings are loose. I wrap band-aids on their metal backs. 

I believed if I prayed hard enough—blanched my palms

from pressing them with all my faithful weight—no one—

no one—would ever die. Now, I only believe in the world,

and the sound a backhand makes on front teeth. What

is it in me that needs to tell you this? I’ve gone a full

season and haven’t lost a glove. They’ve stayed cuffed

into each other in a sack deep in my hall closet, kept

warm by loyalty and by the copper pipe along the floor. 

I would love for my hands to learn to play a waltz, to shadow-

mime winter birds, for my hands to transform into, 

on the one hand, your heart, on the other hand, my heart. 

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Jennifer Martelli has received fellowships from The Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and the Massachusetts Cultural Council. Her work has appeared in Academy of American Poets Poem-A-Day, Poetry, and Best of the Net Anthology. She is the author of Psychic Party Under the Bottle Tree and The Queen of Queens, which won the Italian American Studies Association Book Award and was shortlisted for the Massachusetts Book Award. Jennifer Martelli is co-poetry editor for MER.

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