Imaginary Elegy

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.

 

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Melissa Eleftherion is a writer, librarian, and a visual artist. She grew up in Brooklyn, dropped out of high school, and went on to earn an MFA in Poetry from Mills College and an MLIS from San Jose State University. She is the author of field guide to autobiography (The Operating System, 2018) & six chapbooks: huminsect (dancing girl press, 2013), prism maps (Dusie, 2014), Pigtail Duty (dancing girl press, 2015), the leaves the leaves (poems-for-all, 2017), green glass asterisms (poems-for-all, 2017) & little ditch (above/ground press, 2018). Founder of the Poetry Center Chapbook Exchange for San Francisco State University, Melissa now lives in Mendocino County where she works as a Teen Librarian, teaches creative writing, & curates the LOBA Reading Series at Ukiah Library. Recent work is available at www.apoetlibrarian.wordpress.com.