Jennifer Martelli
February 18, 1962 -
September 25, 2025

Jennifer Martelli (1962-2025) authored four chapbooks and four full-length poetry collections including Psychic Party Under the Bottle Tree (Lily Poetry Review Books, 2025), which was longlisted for the Massachusetts Book Award, and The Queen of Queens (Bordighera Press), which won the Italian American Studies Association Book Award and was shortlisted for the Massachusetts Book Award. Her work has been published 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 received fellowships from The Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Monson Arts, and the Massachusetts Cultural Council. She served as the poetry co-editor of Mom Egg Review (MER).

I Address My Catho-alcoholism

and ask why the roots
of my hair are like the white bulbs

of tender spring onions, and is this why
I cry each equinox? Why a church 

with a burning
ribcage rages in the middle of a river & what 

of the thirsty churches? 
Tonight, 

in the mid-spring sky, the long 
constellation of Queen Berenice’s hair coils 

over my house. And Corvus the Crow
looks for water. The Scales of Libra weigh. 

I’m balancing at last, well past 
my own apogee. 

—from Presence 2020