Jean Pedrick Chapbook Prize Finalist, selected by Matthew E. Henry
Kevin Carey’s books include the poetry collections The One Fifteen to Penn Station, Jesus Was a Homeboy, Set in Stone, the co-written Olympus Heights, and the collaboration Revere Beach Stories: Poems and Photographs. He has published three works of fiction: The Beach People, Murder in the Marsh and a new novel Junior Miles and the Junkman (Regal House / Fitzroy Books) which won the Paterson Prize for Books for Young Readers and has been chosen for the Pen Faulkner Writers in the Schools Program in Washington, DC. Kevin is the co-founder of Molecule: a tiny lit mag. https://kevincareywriter.com/
Jennifer Martelli’s collections include Psychic Party Under the Bottle Tree, longlisted for the Massachusetts Book Award, The Queen of Queens, which won the Italian American Studies Association Book Award and was also longlisted for the Massachusetts Book Award, and My Tarantella, also shortlisted for the Massachusetts Book Award and named finalist for the Housatonic Book Award. She received fellowships from The Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Monson Arts, and the Massachusetts Cultural Council. Her work appeared in The Academy of American Poets Poem-A-Day, Poetry, Best of the Net Anthology, Braving the Body Anthology, Verse Daily, Plume, Diode, Pleiades, and many other publications. Jennifer was co-poetry editor for Mom Egg Review. Her passing in September 2025 meant a great loss to the poetry community, her loved ones, and her many friends. www.jennmartelli.com
Stephenie Young is a photographer and professor at Salem State University where she teaches world literature. She is originally from California but has lived in Somerville for nearly 20 years. During COVID she began a long-term photo project about everyday life in historic Revere Beach and then collaborated with Jenn Martelli and Kevin Carey to create Revere Beach Stories. You can see more of her work on Instagram @stephenieayoung.
“As a Crow Flies” – poem by Jennifer Martelli, photographs by Stephenie Young.
With thanks to Nixes Mate Books.
Always
I was a function room bartender, weekends on the beach
in the 80’s. Always the same scene: young men in ties
reaching for the flying garter belt, a band with a singer
who had sideburns and a ruffled shirt, the best man
sneaking back from the boy’s room wiping powder off
his nose, the sweet square old ladies shaking it to the
hully gully - the puffy hair, the tall neck bottles of beer,
the pink gin fizzes, and one happy red-faced uncle
setting up the bar again, Give ‘em all one and always
there was one wild guy doing a split in the middle of
the dance floor, spilling his drink and bumping into
everyone around him, and always I’d see him at the end
of the night, his shirttail out, sweat stained, smoking a
cigarette, the bride and groom long gone, the band packed
up on the highway home, the house lights bright.
He’d be talking to a bridesmaid or somebody’s sister
about a job he lost or about how he missed his kids,
but that he was going to see them soon, and always
this guy would wander over while I was wiping bottles
or counting the cash drawer. He’d smile and ask me if
I had one on ice, which I always did, and he’d lay
a ten down on the bar and salute, like I’d handed him
a secret only the two of us knew.
KC
As a Crow Flies
On my car’s navigational system North Shore Road is a straight yellow line between the blue of Revere Beach and the Pines River (where a woman once walked into and drowned herself after shooting her husband at home, and I thought, what willpower, to drown oneself, to keep going farther in and under). I am technically on Route 1 which would take me right down to Key West if I kept going for days, as a crow flies. Airplanes lower above me towards Logan, landing, so low people here need shatter-proof windows to muffle the sound and to keep the panes whole.
JM