Recovery

Nostalgia for illness is

a coin I try not to spend all at once

Though spent is a feeling I miss

Spent: a prize-winning stillness

Nothing like it

A complete thesis

I put the thought in a drawer

Put the drawer in the river

Hold myself together

I will purge out

the rebels among you

What I wouldn’t give for a good emptying

Then you shall know

that I am Lord

Recovery

Uncomfortable with ghost stories I consider hitchhiking

into another body entirely

away from this valley of dry bones

And flesh came upon them

But there was still no spirit in them

I find myself guiltily in need of a mother

Who will teach me to pronounce name?

Who will teach me to pronounce my own name?

Ezekiel

Laqzhy

Jehezekel

Elaina

An army stands from dust and I—disgusted—

imagine a highway along which I could empty

Recovery

It wasn’t nice but it was

delivered to and

through me whole I knew

without having to learn

how to clear a small village

of renegades—I miss

the aubade much more

than the making

After dinner I swell uncomfortably

The hour offers me a hand

I hold it

I will bring them out of the country

where they sojourn

If I could rid myself of myself I surely would

Recovery

I ride into myself on the sturdy back of myself

 My Lord

My Mountain

My Mouth

________

Elaina Ellis is the author of Write About an Empty Birdcage. Her poems have appeared in Horsethief, The Iowa Review, Poetry Northwest, Muzzle Magazine, Vinyl Poetry, and Expedition Press’s broken broadside series. A Lambda Literary Fellow, Mineral School June Dodge Fellow, and ArtistTrust GAP Award recipient, Elaina is at work on a second poetry collection, which responds to the biblical book of Ezekiel. She lives in Bellingham, Washington and works at Copper Canyon Press.