Aaron DeLee 

Latin Elegy

To wrap my mouth around yours and tongue
          your tongue, that’s what I’m after.
Slip your syllables around like Aeon
          Flux would, inserting encrypted scrolls
into moveable teeth, pockets where roots
          write themselves. I’ll ignore your chipped
molars and canker sores, for I adore the taste
          offered by antiquated acquaintances, the aroma
of primitive odors, of all that’s Indo--
          it’s romantic, really, such touch and go,
this dance between stretched flesh
          that snails weave when out of their shells,
entwined. Suffice your suffix with its
          -mus ending because it ends with us,
because it means ‘we’, because it
          drips with how we used to be
​

---

An Elegy for Mojave

​Now, all that water the Colorado gushes
no longer blushes with sediment,
due to the dam.

​What is the word for green?
Not envy, not for those living
along the serpentine bank.

Elderly men mumble as motor boats
traverse the current;
untaught to not talk in mothertongue.

Meandering here, as a rattle snake
banters about when you get near,
then all of a sudden, quiet—

I see how deep this vein of river’s
been cut. I’ve had so many dreams
snapped up. Remember? Hardly, fossils

fail feathers and scales;
their colors once vibrant and separate
now all run ruddy.

---

Dear Q

Your days there are fewer
than the notches used in
your father’s belt; that lean
leather strip pulled out
to clap against your backside
and knock out the fairy
dust, the horseplay, ballet
twirls you must make
because westerly winds so
move you; he plays doctor,
performing the Heimlich
maneuver which stings
your throat with cries
and cough-ups of never
again touching your sister’s
My Little Ponies, the lies,
because you did and he
wrings you like those white
knuckles of his around
his buckle. And that snap
of his snapping catches you
by surprise every time.
You know why rabbits run
and hide when the dog’s
let loose outside. You
wish upon the nebulae
of bruises left behind
that you would disappear
or die, unaware that your
years are dissolving
rapidly around you like
the bubbles bursting open
from a rabid dog’s face;
his fate is written in foam.
Before you know it, you’ll
be bidding him goodbye .




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Aaron DeLee’s previous work has appeared in Interrobang, Found Poetry Review, OVS Magazine, and various other journals. His work has also been commissioned, set to music and performed by a Chicago opera troupe, VOX3.