I Offer Kitty Genovese Fake Fruit

 
 
 
The gilt pears shine

 

like the hooded eyelids

 

of the Madonna peering from the wall

 

in shame and piety. The black glass grapes

 

tight with silk and wire grow round

 

as your lover’s eyes when she’d see you come

 

back into the room. Would she remember

 

your softness, Kitty? Like these velvet apples stuck

 

with pins and green

 

sequin-cloves? The fruit bleed

 

something dead and dusty in the lead

 

crystal bowl in my mother’s parlor

 

in the old house where the lights

 

don’t work, the gold cherub-sconces

 

unplugged from the walls. Outside,

 

the moon is new, unlit. Eat.

 

Stay here with me. Don’t ever leave.

 

 

 

 

Jennifer Martelli’s debut poetry collection, The Uncanny Valley, was published in 2016 by Big Table Publishing Company. She is also the author of the chapbook, Apostrophe and the chapbook, After Bird, from Grey Book Press. Her work has appeared in Thrush, [Pank], Glass Poetry Journal, Cleaver, and The Heavy Feather Review. Jennifer Martelli has been nominated for Pushcart and Best of the Net Prizes and is the recipient of the Massachusetts Cultural Council Grant in Poetry. She is a book reviewer for Up the Staircase Quarterly, as well as a co-curator for The Mom Egg VOX Folio.