Sweetness
by Jennifer Martelli
L. gave me a salted chocolate vulva
wrapped in forest green foil. You always
use “vulva” in poems, she said, though
this poem is the first time I’ve ever used
that silly word. Before I ate the whole
vulva, which fit into my palm like a tatting
loom, I touched its folds. The chocolate
darkened toward the center—this created
depth. I wondered who carved this mold
to shape all this melted sweetness?
When I still menstruated, I lost the string
attached to a tampon. I was told to squat
over a mirror and dig deep into myself.
Doctors say the cervix is smooth as an eardrum,
blue if pregnant, pale when old like me.
That day, I pulled myself apart, rocked
back on my haunches: a holy grotesque, a Sheela-
na-Gig carved into a mossy stone wall.
wrapped in forest green foil. You always
use “vulva” in poems, she said, though
this poem is the first time I’ve ever used
that silly word. Before I ate the whole
vulva, which fit into my palm like a tatting
loom, I touched its folds. The chocolate
darkened toward the center—this created
depth. I wondered who carved this mold
to shape all this melted sweetness?
When I still menstruated, I lost the string
attached to a tampon. I was told to squat
over a mirror and dig deep into myself.
Doctors say the cervix is smooth as an eardrum,
blue if pregnant, pale when old like me.
That day, I pulled myself apart, rocked
back on my haunches: a holy grotesque, a Sheela-
na-Gig carved into a mossy stone wall.
Jennifer Martelli has received fellowships from The Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and the Massachusetts Cultural Council. Her work has appeared in The Academy of American Poets Poem-A-Day, Poetry, Verse Daily, Plume, The Tahoma Literary Review, and elsewhere. Her latest collection, The Queen of Queens, won the Italian American Studies Association Book Award and was shortlisted for the Massachusetts Book Award. Jennifer Martelli is co-poetry editor for MER. www.jennmartelli.com