It's #tbt! Enjoy this great one from SWWIM Every Day's archives!
I am trying to understand you, moth
Your brown blink of dun fur dotted white buzzing
You, dead on my office floor
You, taunting me on the house porch
Who do you carry?
The Internet tells me you bear a skull on your thorax
But I see a smiling pig snout as if you welcomed the down and out and muddy
Do I know you? Did we meet on the beached fishing boat in Monterosso?
I sense you have a message transcending statistical data
We are both honey-named short proboscis Medusas
Larvae for the undercurrent’s meat
Taxonomical aberrations
Pierce the wax, damage the fruit
The myth of my Italian heritage says I may have the malocchia
To be stalked by a death’s head moth
To be stalked by wings I must carry a horn
Stout tongue of the stigma
If the oil forms an eye, your fur is mine
Myth says moths are dead souls
Your body was as intact as a specimen
As I set you in the wastebasket
Where is the apparition you’ve been carrying?
I want to talk to her.
Melissa Eleftherion is a cis queer human, a writer, a librarian, and a visual artist. She is the author of field guide to autobiography (The Operating System, 2018), & eleven chapbooks, including trauma suture (above/ground press, 2020), & sunflower spell (poems-for-all, 2022). Her work has been widely published in various journals including The Berkeley Poetry Review, Paperbag, & Entropy, and nominated for the Pushcart Prize & Best of the Net. Born & raised in Brooklyn, Melissa founded and co-curates The San Francisco State Poetry Center Chapbook Exchange with Elise Ficarra. She now lives in Northern California where she manages the Ukiah Branch Library, curates the LOBA Reading Series, and serves as the Poet Laureate of Ukiah. Recent work is available at www.apoetlibrarian.wordpress.com.
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