Within Words We Are One
(Covid-19) Summer by Juanita J. Martin Beaches are quiet Except the occasional Tide coming in As the sun burns its way through the atmosphere No sizzle from the grill Everyone’s inside— Dreaming of vacations they never had as pools of sweat bead guzzling water clinging …
Hair It Is By Dr. Gina Rizzo Everyone is valuable and beautiful as they are. Hair has a mind of its own. How it is born is how it’s grown. Hair is all the same. We are all working with how it came. Perms to …
i am a doll dug out of a landfill by Melissa Eleftherion Body of the cave mouth Dissolution of salt Intuitive ash collects I vibrate to the speleothem the duodenum My heart holds the dirt like some sweet music i remember once a breathing green i remember once breathing i am a dull dig out of a landscape The hemisphere a polydactyl crustacean of a fault Veil of topography how the dirt is lucid mass shell of sea star fall in a ditch this sun’s channel lines and gaps Here I am that dirt i am limestone I am gravel Lush grave of the verdant flesh a lyric from the detritus One lyric up up little ascending I say this to my cohort i say to the wind my desert of doll people i say to the abandoned tire i say to metal up up you can reach it
Melissa Eleftherion (she/they) is a writer, a librarian, and a visual artist. She is the author of field guide to autobiography (The Operating System, 2018), & nine chapbooks, including little ditch (above/ground press, 2018) & trauma suture (above/ground press, 2020). Born & raised in Brooklyn, Melissa created, developed, and co-curates The SFSU Poetry Center Chapbook Exchange with Elise Ficarra. She now lives in Northern California where she manages the Ukiah Library, teaches creative writing, & curates the LOBA Reading Series. Recent work is available at www.apoetlibrarian.wordpress.com.