Issue 35: dervish; wolf 4 by Melissa Leto

"you’re spinning / let me steady you. / once upon a forest / a girl wandered deep into the veil / of green led by / the sound of rabbits...."

Jul 26, 2024

Welcome to KHÔRA, a dynamic online arts space produced in collaboration with Lidia Yuknavitch’s Corporeal Writing. Visit our Archive to read previous issues. Scroll down if you’d like your work to be considered for future issues.

Melissa Leto, *skull in bloom,* digital photograph, 2024. Courtesy of the artist.

dervish; wolf 4 by Melissa Leto

Begin the series here.

dervish; wolf

feeling of the woman in the woods
thought of killing father
lived in her body
her skull on a plate
in a dusty cottage
the roots growing through two eye holes
into Triarch
a wild azure coat copper claws
elixir of moss once upon a
go fuck yourself devour
possibility
let the body wolf
let the body of a wolf come out
of the body of a woman
you know the smell all the better
cut through centuries into the marmalade
of them
Dervish could smell it on her…

Read dervish; wolf 4.

Melissa Leto makes art near the Salt River on Hohokam land in Arizona. Her/Their work has appeared in Bloody Funny Zine, Shrew Lit Magazine, Tom Maxedon’s Word! podcast, and Write On Downtown. Their wordmaking weaves joy, grief, and trauma while infusing the interconnectedness of alive things on planet earth with queer love in realms of hybridity. They have an MFA from Northern Arizona University, are the lead facilitator for literary arts non-profit Revisionary Arts, and an editor for Rinky Dink Press.