{"id":6561,"date":"2015-02-04T08:53:07","date_gmt":"2015-02-04T15:53:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/?page_id=6561"},"modified":"2015-02-04T18:42:38","modified_gmt":"2015-02-05T01:42:38","slug":"the-girl-with-black-black-hair-and-the-golden-snake","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/?page_id=6561","title":{"rendered":"The Girl with Black, Black Hair and The Golden Snake"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Jennifer Martelli<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The snake is strung with drops of poison, gold<br \/>\namber rosary beads,<br \/>\nending with his golden eye.<\/p>\n<p>*<\/p>\n<p>Alabaster day, the town square blurred<br \/>\nby the heat of the fire<br \/>\nunder a pot. Dust when they dragged her out.<\/p>\n<p>*<\/p>\n<p>They used my pot to boil the pitch, my knife to slice<br \/>\nthe pillows for the eider down feathers, my chair<br \/>\nfrom the kitchen. My chocolate. My cigarettes.<\/p>\n<p>*<\/p>\n<p>His throat is dry, which means<br \/>\nhis whole body is dry, even the venom.<br \/>\nPitchy pine tar stings both tips of his tongue.<\/p>\n<p>*<\/p>\n<p>The ancient well in the middle of town<br \/>\nkeeps the ground shady and damp. Probably there are coins down at the bottom.<br \/>\nThe snake coils next to the cool stones.<\/p>\n<p>*<\/p>\n<p>The newsreel is black and white and captioned<br \/>\ncollaborateur. No one in the film notices the snake by the well:\u00a0\u00a0 the snake<br \/>\ncan barely be seen, doesn\u2019t look gold.<\/p>\n<p>*<\/p>\n<p>The snake has cervical eyes that try to close.<br \/>\nThat day, there are many round things: the well, the girl\u2019s mouth<br \/>\nwhen the tar poured down, a sticky mantilla of webs.<\/p>\n<p>*<\/p>\n<p>He can feel the yelling and someone crying so hard<br \/>\nunder his white jacob\u2019s ladder belly.<br \/>\nThe feathers wafting down were not birds.<\/p>\n<p>*<\/p>\n<p>A snake is like a god, exiled.<br \/>\nIts Jacob\u2019s Ladder belly is soft and white and feels<br \/>\neverything we fear.<\/p>\n<p>*<\/p>\n<p>What hurt most was the woman<br \/>\nwho held my chin up<br \/>\nso the feathers would stick to my face.<\/p>\n<p><strong>JENNIFER MARTELLI<\/strong> was born and raised in Massachusetts, and graduated from Boston University and The Warren Wilson M.F.A. Program for Writers. She\u2019s taught high school English as well as women\u2019s literature at Emerson College in Boston. Her work has appeared in the following publications: <em>Tar River Review<\/em>, <em>Bop Dead City<\/em>, <em>burntdistrict<\/em>, <em>Melancholy Hyperbole<\/em>. She was a recipient of the Massachusetts Cultural Council Grant in Poetry and recently received a Pushcart Nomination. Her chapbook, \u201cApostrophe,\u201d was published in 2010 by BigTable Publishing Company. You can read more of her work at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jennifermartelli.com\" target=\"_blank\">jennifermartelli.com<\/a>. She lives in Marblehead, Massachusetts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Jennifer Martelli The snake is strung with drops of poison, gold amber rosary beads, ending with his golden eye. * Alabaster day, the town square blurred by the heat of the fire under a pot. Dust when they dragged her &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/?page_id=6561\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"parent":6558,"menu_order":3,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-6561","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/P15duy-1HP","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/6561","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6561"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/6561\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6597,"href":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/6561\/revisions\/6597"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/6558"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6561"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}