Grey Figs and Leaves, by Wedgwood
My mother’s china was bone-white, barely used, and rimmed with 14-karat gold.
Nobody wanted it after she died deep into that awful summer. The bowls
were too shallow, could barely hold one ladleful of the aglio olio that only
my uncle was allowed to make each Christmas Eve. The olive oil rose
in fat round shapes, made a slick layer on the hot broth, above the angel
hair, around the single anchovy: its salty thick ocean taste lasting too long.
My great-aunt, the strega, would read our futures: how the oil refused to sink,
how it refused to join. How the oil could look like a monster’s egg or the lost
green beryl that fell from my mother’s ring.
Sometimes, I forget what is memory and what is wished for.
Would my mother be with me for all time. Would I keep her china with the wreath
of grey figs and leaves with metal paint that could explode. What of her ring.
Nobody wanted it after she died deep into that awful summer. The bowls
were too shallow, could barely hold one ladleful of the aglio olio that only
my uncle was allowed to make each Christmas Eve. The olive oil rose
in fat round shapes, made a slick layer on the hot broth, above the angel
hair, around the single anchovy: its salty thick ocean taste lasting too long.
My great-aunt, the strega, would read our futures: how the oil refused to sink,
how it refused to join. How the oil could look like a monster’s egg or the lost
green beryl that fell from my mother’s ring.
Sometimes, I forget what is memory and what is wished for.
Would my mother be with me for all time. Would I keep her china with the wreath
of grey figs and leaves with metal paint that could explode. What of her ring.
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 Verse Daily, Iron Horse Review (winner, Photo Finish contest), The Sycamore Review, and POETRY. 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.
Art: Things I Knew When I Was Young by Kristin LaFollette