from Dear Kaleidoscope, In Lieu Of

When night she plunge to bone violet cricket saw she hear each song eaten slow she breathe in salt dirt skin she turn as hot as noon and when her veins swap blue she call the hollow home she bring the shadows down.

*

Lack, I left to follow no more crumb as star I hunker I coil I remember only a room and in it something blooms burns I mistake moths for plums I grow blue always thinking of those crows somewhere south, outside.

*

Edge-blown or end-blown, purlicue. Dear xyster or mother. I'm aflutter, an odalisque, all languish. Water-lilies. Hollow. Limn me, epilimnion. I'm floating, lithe. Transluce. Illume. Elsewhere, a desert.

L. Vella has poems that have appeared or are forthcoming from Spork, Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet, and Sugar House Review. A graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop and University of Michigan, she now lives and works in a place surrounded by cornfields turned into baseball diamonds.