Melissa Eleftherion


My Mother Would Be a Pigeon (after Duncan)


My mother would be a pigeon and suck milk from my wrist One white arc from wrist to mouth frozen


suspended


A placating potion placed


Between teeth and fed she would Claws drawn


The alley was a prowl She searched curb litter for gold


My mother would be a pigeon and stain windshields her grace Forlorn in purple bloom her majestic sadness Detritus


A divination of cowrie shells like marbles ‘cross asphalt


My mother would be a pigeon and raise one leg in the air to prepare to fight and would cluck back





To prepare to fly spread wingspan she would cluck beak and ascend with claws pink and black back to where the earth dips her wings in tar and slaps her body blue and slack


“I’m fine” she would cluck back


and stroke belly Cluck beak and scrape pride gently away


Melissa Eleftherion grew up in Brooklyn. Her work has appeared in The Paterson Literary Review, Big Scream, Defenestration, Inch, TRY, Ur Vox, Letterbox Magazine and 580 Split, as well as online in Womb, the press gang, There, and Cricket Online Review. She received her MFA from Mills College, and is currently pursuing a second degree in Library Science. She shares a home in Berkeley with her husband, her three-year old son, and a couple of chickens.


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