Allure of echinoderm symmetry

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

 

Mom applied 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

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 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, carton of YiaYia’s Winstons

Yellow calla lilies callow in the breeze

 

We wanted a gut of snakes

We wanted a mouth teeming with stars

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.