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Jennifer Martelli

Moon Jellyfish 
Walking the low tide beach at dusk, I stopped short at a dead jellyfish:
 
pink poison (a tattoo on the nape of a neck) still stinging, hurtful.
 
Further on, another: Uncle Fester’s bald scalp—dumb, electrified.
 
Hundreds left strewn all over the mud: clear sandy blobs, half-globe sadnesses.
 
One jellyfish lay like a broken Magic 8 ball: too hazy to tell.
 
One had black sand dried into a small V, like the back of a pixie cut
 
or a soul patch, shaved and groomed, a mound shorn to please: sexy and so plump.
 
One fit into a bra, balanced breasts. One missed the wave, couldn’t get home.
 
A heavy-set woman paddled her board towards the little harbor, north.
 
Did you see all of these? I yelled, my words echoed off her sunburnt skin.
 
One, a dried purple plum. One had the imprint of a toddler’s soft arch.
 
The harbor illuminated with globe lights strung off the yacht clubs’ piers.
 
I realized this was my old drunk nightmare but I wasn’t sure who else knew.
 
The boozy boats moored, bobbing? The woman, rowing, hair pulled up and clasped?

(Poetry Magazine)


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