a many-skinned government. curators of the unctuous. the plaintive with welts. we

are alarming, cheerful. any of various meats. sensitive to high winds.

developed in the ghost of natural light. we climb the glowing clock. wound of habit.

perpendicular to mature wins. a fur of families.

any of various. time the clematis. up up the young or eggs.

someday to uncoiling.

breathing in feathers. the regularly occurring copulation. large, non-migratory.

and stridulating. rubbing my species

an underground rhizome of chirping, abolishing

play back the offensively flattering

play back the wilderness

any old-world tropical iconoclast

any of several grasses for the overthrow

the numerous, the diptera

larvae in wounds

ossuary with a wide spout // self-feeding in the sea green.

a genus changed into a spring // a genus mundane in the latitudes.

Melissa Eleftherion grew up in Brooklyn. A high school dropout, she went on to earn advanced degrees in film production, English literature, and library science. She is the author of huminsect (dancing girl press, 2013), prism maps (dusie kollektiv, 2014), Pigtail Duty (dancing girl press, 2015), and several other chapbooks and fragments. Recent work appears or is forthcoming in Bone Bouquet, Delirious Hem, Entropy, Manifesting the Female Epic, Negative Capability, Open Letters Monthly, So to Speak, Tinderbox, & TRUCK. She works as a librarian with Mendocino County Libraries, and created, developed, and currently manages the Poetry Center Chapbook Exchange. Follow her @apoetlibrarian & www.apoetlibrarian.wordpress.com.