Tongue Root
Long ago, everybody I knew had last names like mine, all ending with a long, rounded vowel. Vowels have height. Like planets orbiting, they are frictionless, compulsive, and smooth. The vowel is the nucleus of a word. Everything—all sound—depends on the position of the tongue root for articulation, for movement.
I asked my friend, who has the same name as I, Do people think I’m not so bright?
No one thinks that, she said, but you have a strong accent.
I have always lived by the ocean. When I was a child, I built my altar at low-tide on Revere Beach. I made a pentacle with:
1. a small, suede fringe pouch I stole from one sister with my other sister’s doll tucked inside
2. the blue plastic pirate sword I pulled from the heart of a Maraschino cherry
3. grandpa’s skeleton key I found dangling from a hook on grandma’s stove
4. from my mother’s pocket, the book of matches from The General Edward’s Inn
5. my father’s tarnished brass tie pin with an embossed tiny White House.
What I conjured then, I live with now. I conjured women nobody heard.
Maybe people hear me and think I’ve never left this place. Truly, there are whole sounds I elide, delete, and erase. There are whole periods of time. too. There are people. What I mean is no one taught me to pronounce a whole phoneme, to role my tongue, to open the glottis, to think that ghosts won’t appear when I speak.
16 Reasons Why I Became a Gray Pearl
1. I grew tired of being a grain of irritation in the world’s soft mouth.
2. Thought I’d be a moon floating in a cloudy afternoon sky.
3. Being asexual, I craved bondage.
4. Craved four gold prongs to hold me in place on a band for the left ring finger.
5. Needed to backhand someone right on the mouth.
6. Felt silky, felt smooth, like a baby snake’s tongue.
7. Felt unsure so I committed to pescatarianism.
8. Bounced like an idea and got lost.
9. I was pried from my hinged jewel casket with a flat shucking knife.
10. I wanted to be shucked. Wanted to be shucked so bad.
11. Wanted sisters.
12. Wanted to be drilled and strung on a gold chain.
13. Wanted to tink-tink against another gray pearl or a gold bead.
14. Wanted to hang around a woman’s neck.
15. Wanted to taste her sweat.
16. The only way to test my purity was to drop me in a glass of red wine vinegar to see if I’d dissolve. I wanted to dissolve.
Jennifer Martelli is the author of My Tarantella (Bordighera Press), awarded an Honorable Mention from the Italian-American Studies Association, selected as a 2019 “Must Read” by the Massachusetts Center for the Book, and named as a finalist for the Housatonic Book Award. Her chapbook, After Bird, was the winner of the Grey Book Press open reading, 2016. Her work has appeared in Poetry, West Trestle Review, Verse Daily, Iron Horse Review (winner, Photo Finish contest), The Sycamore Review, and Cream City Review. Jennifer Martelli has twice received grants from the Massachusetts Cultural Council for her poetry. She is co-poetry editor for Mom Egg Review and co-curates the Italian-American Writers Series. www.jennmartelli.com