unwary              green            it calls
                                                    out  
 
                hairy breasted          feathered advances
 
 
 
developing in
the scolding rattle
                                    developing under   the hot
                                            fluorescents
 
 
 
                a throat exposed                 a thorax mined
 
 

immature in
the white                    its larvae a blister       reaching upward

 
 
 
                                    a small soaring singly
 
 
 

---

Melissa Eleftherion grew up in Brooklyn. 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, Bukowski Erasure Poetry Anthology, Delirious Hem, Dusie, Entropy, Finery, Manifesting the Female Epic, Mom Egg Review, Open Letters Monthly, Poet as Radio, So to Speak, & TRUCK. She works as a librarian with Mendocino County Libraries, and created, developed, and currently manages the Poetry Center Chapbook Exchange. Follow her @apoetlibrarian & apoetlibrarian.wordpress.com.