Write About an Empty Birdcage

By Elaina M. Elllis

With an ironic swish of the skirt, Elaina M. Ellis has delivered a sweetly strange first collection of poems. Reinventing femininity with each teasing line-break, Ellis pulls sexuality from form, and vulnerability from meter. By turns playful, blunt, and prayerful, Write About an Empty Birdcage documents the painful end of a romantic relationship; revels in the budding of new desire; and ultimately allows hope to climb quietly in through the back window. The poems which explicitly explore identity -- femaleness, Jewishness, queerness -- do so with a critique of power that blends humor, bloodied confession, and a reverence for tension. Ellis is a new poet to watch out for, neither belonging to the full-open swing of spoken word, nor to the inaccessibility of academia: the sonnet is a torch song, the prose poem is a fist. Here you find all the fleshy reveal of the truth, without the ease of nakedness. Write About an Empty Birdcage is a book of poetry that is worth the work of undressing.

Elaina M. Ellis has a voice that cuts through wool. Rich in sound and sense, meaning and madness, she signals and signifies. Her imagery comes from a place of truth and her people sweat and breathe. Hers is a talent that can set the world on fire. -Jenny Factor, Antioch University Los Angeles

• Language: English
• Publisher: Write Bloody Publishing
• Release date: Oct 1, 2018
• ISBN: 9781935904298

Book preview

set,

Prayer for My Partner’s Lover

Your name is lovely,

stark and brightly hued, soft

nape to harsh click, in the span of two syllables.

In my mouth you are a collection of sounds.

In his mouth you are a new home. At night,

he carefully spits out rubies while he believes I am asleep.

He shines them for you while he does his laundry.

He keeps one long string in his pocket,

so he can necklace you

when the time is right. I am thousands of feet

above streets and houses, as I write your name.

I am in the patch of sky traceable by Oregon.

Did you know that’s where I’m from?

The sharp of those evergreen trees

and the edges of seasons, round, that you eat

like new fruit: these are the natural angles

of my bones, the curve of my fat hip.

Did you know my father near-left my

mother, the year before I grew breasts?

He was still wearing an overcoat, the morning he told us.

The heat of my sleep against the cold of his coat.

The new woman had a name like yours.

I never wanted him to kiss me again.

I saw your face and body on a poster once,

tattooed and dewy. I took the poster down,

brought it to him, watched the flush begin

at the base of his neck. As I write this, I am

thousands of feet above the electrical poles.

I imagine the corners of every city are papered

with your name. I am praying hard

Reviews for Write About an Empty Birdcage

[hurricanehanna-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

"Watch me become a backward image- sequence
in a better movie. Here, the broken glass moves from the carpet
where it is embedded, piece by piece back to its original form on the bedside
table. While night moonwalks to morning, watch bits of seeds
blow against the wind to nestle back on their dandelions."

Oh goodness, my dear Elaina. I am held gently within the pages of this book.