Jennifer Martelli is the author of The Queen of Queens (Bordighera Press) and My Tarantella (Bordighera Press), named a "Must Read" by the Massachusetts Center for the Book, and awarded Finalist for the Housatonic Book Award. Martelli's chapbooks include After Bird (Grey Book Press) and In the Year of Ferraro (Nixes Mate). Her work has appeared in Poetry, The Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day, The Tahoma Literary Review, Thrush, Cream City Review, The Shore, River Mouth Review, and elsewhere. Jennifer Martelli has twice received grants for poetry from the Massachusetts Cultural Council. She is co-poetry editor for Mom Egg Review.

Other poems by Jennifer Martelli in Verse Daily:
December 24, 2018:   "Fatal Mouths" "The city guys are stringing Christmas lights on the locust trees...."
December 19, 2018:   "Discussing Elephant Puppets the Night of the Refugee Ban" "Elephant puppets so big ten men can fit under their pipe bodies..."

Books by Jennifer Martelli:

Other poems on the web by Jennifer Martelli:
"Moon Jellyfish"
Three poems
"Corinthians 13:11"
Two poems
"Yomi"
Two poems
Three poems
Two poems
"Fatal Mouths"
"Clothes Pins"
"Grey Figs and Leaves, by Wedgwood"
"Impeachment Day: Planning the Party"
"Root"
"Doc Martens 1460 Wild Botanica"
Three poems
"When Was My Anger Conceived?"
"I Don't Have It, Do You?"
"After JFK's Assassination, (Kitty Genovese Was Murdered) Things Got Really Bad"
"Tree"
"They Found the Gallows Behind Walgreens"
"Did it take long to find me?"
"Luna Maria"

Jennifer Martelli's Website.

Jennifer Martelli on Twitter.

About The Queen of Queens:

"As its intriguing title suggests, The Queen of Queens places royalty alongside the commonplace, parallels contemporary and retrospective, juxtaposes fine with rough. In these unswerving poems, the drugs, pop music, and rocket crash that defined the 80's eerily evoke our era of Trump. The book's speaker laments, 'I fear no one / will ever hear me,' and Martelli's 'queens'—from Geraldine Ferraro to Madonna, Nancy Pelosi to Molly Ringwald-embody the collection's resistance against gender oppression, political sexism, and ongoing threats to reproductive rights, while reminding us that one strong woman can lift us all. This is a powerful account of past and present, strung like the book's frequently recurring pearls—symbol of femininity but also proof that a source of struggle can generate uncommon beauty. I will return to these translucent poems again and again."
—Jennifer Militello

"These poems are both beautiful and brutal, artful and angry, finely-crafted and fierce. Each poem proves the personal is political and that the same concerns about equity for women that were prevalent forty years ago are just as crucial today. In a magical sleight of hand, The Queen of Queens captures both optimism and disappointment, the progress that has been made and the ways we have plateaued. Martelli has answered her own question from 'Self-Portrait as the Half-Dead Cherry Tree Outside the Bedroom Window' —'how do we survive sadness?' Unafraid to grapple with difficult topics, including misogynist rhetoric from other women, Martelli writes about it all: the secrets and mistakes, all the false hopes and struggles. She makes bold art from history and we, her readers, are the wiser for it."
—Jennifer Franklin