G U E S T

Transformation is the great life integer. As discomfiting and tenuous as it sounds, we move through phases & changes as we become & become again. During this unique life cycle where we are being invited/forced to stretch & grow more than usual, I wondered how/if poets were getting through, & what it might look like to cohere these visions.

I reached out to various poets & writers to submit work on the theme of transformation, some of whom I did not know at all, and in doing so, developed & deepened a few relationships with poets I had long admired. This too became an opportunity for stretching outside my own comfort zones.   

Each of these works takes as its fulcrum the concept of transformation. In each of these poems, there is a turning; a decisive pivot of the will to consider or become something other than human; some process by which we might transmogrify into a greater understanding; by which we might at once be immersed and immerse our cells & light into a great organism. Might this be a homecoming, might this signal at last a belonging?

So, gentle reader – transform with us, eat “serviceberries fresh from the shrub”, visit “white skulls resting on the sage-covered desert”, “learn to communicate those languages. Breathe this all in. Hrim: seed mantra.”, “the songs of abolitionists & those bold enough to dream”, “to make wings out of no thing but air and steel”, “here is a wish and the wish is love”, “…to admit that I just wanted to go somewhere and be if not normal then in context”, “We will wear the agates Their inscriptions Cracked from Wildfire”, “may we fall into mouths that devour us.”

Published by

mellielib

Melissa Eleftherion 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 the forthcoming trauma suture (above/ground press, 2020). Born & raised in Brooklyn, Melissa now lives in Mendocino County where she manages the Ukiah Library, teaches creative writing, & curates the LOBA Reading Series. Recent work is available at www.apoetlibrarian.wordpress.com.

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