Kelly Martineau

Catch and Release

After yoga class heat and hunger flash so fast I am peeling off layers across the grocery, stalking

protein, cracking a can of cashews in the aisle. My body hot with absence strikes out for contact,

the strike plate snaring my hip pocket, jerking me out of sync. Ankle turns, twists, falling

sickness onto splayed palms.

My daughters, nine and twelve, grow inches overnight, but

I am the one falling, felled by ungainly limbs. What fresh hell, what flowers for Algernon

is this? Aggression, regression, plea for estrogen. Every waver a wave wresting me, prey

hooked by the wild line cast from my core. I am caught, caught up, tossed back

a body re-leased

tumbling in reverse yet

still

stumbling

forward

The Evidence Against You

Sunday, October 3, 1993,

the date certificated in

ink; the details wholly vague.

The only accounting your passenger

(a notoriously unreliable narrator):

fleeing police on a gravel road,

your wheels met timber,

launched the red 323

drivers side first into the trunk

of a tree. Now what do we do?

you asked, as he was pulled from the car

for questioning. No one home

to answer the phone. The deputy encoded

the news on a 2-inch tape, unplayed

for 24 hours

you were dead

a full day before we knew.

---

Kelly Martineau is an essayist and poet. Her work has appeared in Thimble, Entropy, Little Patuxent Review, Blue Mesa Review, Sycamore Review, and The Florida Review, among other journals. Honors include a Pushcart Prize nomination, and her work has been supported by Artist Trust and Hypatia-in-the-Woods.