BURNING HOUSE PRESS

 

conch/sea

 

I am and I become

abecedarian as a personal charm

to am and become

to be and become

remind me     to be light

 

inside each memory egg a gold inlay of an incident

how the brain compartmentalizes like a chambered nautilus

yet it is all one sand – the brain distinguishes one from the other to understand

 

i’ve made a career of privacy and compartmentalized objects 

i’ve made a career of my traumas

 

what is privacy here with all exposed and sifting over one another in an endless span

how much of privacy or keeping secret is wrapped up in fears around judgement 

light exposures popping up – the privacy book the mean latitudes of reason 

 

a wish to bold concave belly flesh        shoulders wrapped in marbled warscape  

a wish to stand tall to withstand the seas at the door

 

i biked all over town in the early dawn popping off light exposures drunk on tall boys and crashed into a lexus

 

the me then the me

mortal rigor         in the fountain        in the landscape chasm

 

conch/sea 

to rack focus like an aperture to let light in

object/frame             stillness among the raging

 

majestic orifice right there

alate lion in the yard 

 

these death energetics 

i swallow hieroglyphs like a carceral bee 

fires all around the island in a glacial crisis

war on my nerves a pallor a fungus 

the lens    has holes in it 

a disintegration of the ephemeral 

 

the segmented abdomen becomes integrated 

losing its segments         as an insect ages 

cerci wave in weapons of copulation

wingless among the deciduous

 

the sense making 

malicious octopus reticular trap

alphabet laughter in the yarrow

 

when you become the lens itself

so the pallor is swallowed, excreted

the moult can moult

 

 

 

 

electron nostalgia

 

Electra clasp the wretches

wretched         the wretches wash ashore           

 

pubic schema    old days of the goddess

    stressed belly            the “curved inflorescence”

irascible pharaoh        egg-shaped coffin

 

bury me in this alleged

Home

receiving familiar        Legend

Hers is the        felled heart            a sword-shaped segment

 

when i curve toward you

the air stretches me pinnate

radio neuron electra            radial split inquisitive 

I split            I fire on all radials

 

electrons of nostalgia        acquisitive longing

how the “stigma persists at the tip”    even though its buried

how trauma persists            the skins a sun coming through it

 

kletic

 

wild mouths wild mouths

when the agor settles

when gold dust lament

covers it all

i am a beetle captured

in glass

my green thorax aglow

among the amber

my pincers akimbo

like come at me bro

i still believe in a female god

 

Melissa Eleftherion is a writer, librarian, and a visual artist. She is the author of field guide to autobiography (The Operating System, 2018), & nine chapbooks, including the forthcoming trauma suture (above/ground press, 2020). Born & raised in Brooklyn, Melissa now lives in Mendocino County where she manages the Ukiah Library, teaches creative writing, & curates the LOBA Reading Series. Recent work is available at www.apoetlibrarian.wordpress.com.