lolo elleri




Light is a dagger, cutting faces
of angry fathers into the growing day.
I am casting the cold stone of you 
into the ocean. I am becoming
something sick. The calm inside me
is made of grief and stolen air.

The sky of me is cloudless, cruel
in its nakedness. I am eating over
the consecrated body of your silence.
I place the bowl on your empty chest.
It fills with warm rainwater,
then bluestem, asters, and buckbrush.

Our land is red painted, feathers of clay,
salt seams. I am circling high above
abandoned pastures. Everything burns
dry white-gold under the late August sun,
heavy sand plum sweetness on the wind.

I am sitting cross-legged at the edge of you.
We will find each other again a thousand times.
I will become gypsum, melt into your waters.
You flow down from the high seam
of the world, to the east and to the west.

The young beetles of you fly home
to my brittle branches. You drink from ancient,
awkward flowers. You are teaching me that
love is not pain, it is quiet. You are perfectly still
in me as dark thunderheads gather strength.
Soon we will bend before the hard wind.




lolo elleri is no one in particular. Their work can be found in places both real and simulated. They live in the world, far away from outer space.