For years, I studied German, the tongue
rooted in the back of my mouth, thick
and unnatural for me to even say
who I was: Ich bin, I am. A crow,
omnipotent and Eurasian, lodged
in the hollow at the secret end
of my throat where a church
waited, beyond my mouth’s arched
roof bones, nave to apse, raw
and red from this scrapy language.
Ich bin! Ich bin! I am! I am! The crow
built a nest out of Berlin black locust
twigs, big enough to house a clan
of birds. When they fly out to hunt,
I’ll wear their nest as a crown.
ABOUT THE POET
Jennifer Martelli is the author of The Queen of Queens, winner of the Italian
American Studies Association Book Award and named a “must-read” by the
Massachusetts Center for the Book and My Tarantella, also a “must-read,” and
finalist for the Housatonic Book Award. Her work has appeared in Poetry, The
Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day, The Tahoma Literary Review, Folio,
Jet Fuel Review, Tab: A Journal of Poetry, and elsewhere. Jennifer Martelli has
received fellowships from the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and the
Massachusetts Cultural Council. JennMartelli.com
ABOUT SUGAR HOUSE REVIEW
We loved reading the work that we’ve published (clearly), and we want an
opportunity to better hear our contributors. We're featuring audio recordings of
poems from our pages, read by the poet. This an open invitation to all contributors
from any of our issues, we were delighted to print your work, now we’re eager to
hear it.
