Melissa Eleftherion's Blog, page 14

wrens

terns – autobio

My So-Called Larval Life

 

The executive wanted her larvae so I purchased the artificial diet

There was a gourmet guy selling vac-paks – no molting in the mouth

I acquiesced to the cubicle I salivated for mulberry leaves

 

Lemon yellow & lungless I breathed through small holes

Chewed on Instagrammed instar memories

Oh  - happy moth memories

 

Today in captivity I stare at pixels

Come visit my thorax come sleep in a roomier skin

We’ve lost the ability to fly

A spinning black – a production cycle

 

 

sea eyes

 

 

 

timed mimicry

 

pentaradial

autobio – day seven

Allure of echinoderm symmetry

We marveled gasping in sea[wage] wa[te]r

 

My mom shook the Etch a Sketch with vigor

At the attachment a variation

We were trees we were leaves we were litter

 

This habit of margins

No scientific names found

Long, divided – but extending

Sometimes the wings are dark, especially in females

 

We chased balloons in the rain

Developed unique body plans

“If I tattoo you with flowers, it will be a kind of protection”

If I eat Lays with my Grandma, it will be connection

We avoided the porn, adjusted the Craftmatic

 

Distinguished from other brittle stars

Distinguished from the bottom-dweller

The rapture of pentaradial force

The wrath of a sessile ancestor

 

Oh, calcareous fatty deposits

Oh, pack of Winston cigarettes

Yellow calla lilies callow in the breeze

 

We wanted a gut of snakes

We wanted a mouth teeming with stars

 

*italicized phrases appropriated from http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/7... 

Loon – #7

Call -

in winter, the darker

in flight, silence

 

Call is an ascending body

Laugh and fast wingbeats

Swimming bird hops

 

When sky is a rapid quacking

When sky expands its species

Upturn our pale edgings

autobio – day six

Gently falling skin economy

Expectation – snow

A meridian of angles to better

The quacking of a fragile biology

Feathered eggshell of a father

 

To pollute our failures we lubricated silence

Crashed the sneering anti-party

Hid carapace’s measure in a cube

A field guide to pieces

Medicinal glass into fire

…

 

prompt from Poets & Writers’ The Time is Now:

Make a list of ten words by flipping randomly through any book–a dictionary, a poetry collection, a novel, an encyclopedia–and choosing a word you see on the page. Incorporate these words into a poem made up of three stanzas composed of five lines each.

autobio for day five

to curate a chapel we put our hands together and blew

in warmer latitudes a glimpse of ocean mouth

the sea-green beyond finger steeple

 

a self of units

song a decorated structure

any starling

any rattle

 

we migrate from saltwater

any of creeping various

the body of the lower

amatory, saclike

family of egress