
Poet of the Month
Every month Moon Tide Press features a different poet to celebrate and bring readership to deserving, diverse voices.
If you are interested in being featured as a Poet of the Month, or want to nominate a poet, please contact editor@moontidepress.com.
Melissa Lussier
June 2023

Melissa Lussier is a singer/songwriter/poetess who began writing and singing at the age of 4. Hailing from the rust belt city of Buffalo, NY, she dove into SoCal five years ago and has since been enjoying the sunshine, wild parrots, and eclectic art scene. Melissa is highly passionate about gender issues and social justice, and is currently hosting the Kindling Salon Circle Art Series at Hellada Gallery. When not performing, Melissa can be found shaking it on the dance floor, traveling, staging photo shoots of her cat, Mr Tweakers, or in her kitchen, where she loves creating culinary art.
RUST BELT HEART
The plane greets runway and the filament of your relocated heart sighs--
like a braille map of time, the skyline of a once-decaying rust belt city emerges
and you wonder what it will feel like this time
what the wind will weave into this particular shade of skin
You venture into recesses to be greeted with familiar paintings--
the bars, filled with the same wandering patrons,
sea anemone tentacles draped around familiar potions
shoulders hunched as always, yet somehow, the anchors of these ships echo wider now
Cumulus clouds gather, tugging across the
horizon as if they have been rehearsing this brilliant overture of sunset for you
because they know your new town is cloudless,
because the new skies are naked blue canvases marred by inexhaustibly smug sunlight
You sit on your father's porch
owl eyes perched on the edge of the word home,
on this lake, this lapis lazuli womb who has
stood watchful as you wailed to her, fucked to her, bled to her
who now slows to see you slither and swerve in your serpent skin
Sometimes you dream that you are a ship drifting from a dock
and your father,
stands and waits for you,
his prosthetic leg turned wooden and crooked
and when you don't return,
he slips into the water and becomes suspended there,
awaiting your hand
You gingerly lie a blanket over your mother's sleeping body
and kiss her rosewater cheek
knowing that tomorrow,
you fly to other shores,
continue your seeking where your hips sway wider and louder
where the wild parrots and palm trees
are still foreign enough to unzip your comfort,
to unhinge the stop signs you place in your own way.
Some days, freedom feels like a lead suit that will drown everything you love.
SCARLET SONG
Through the crackling call,
from a swinging hammock
nestled in South America's plump arms
your best friend says:
this,
is how a life slips by
you wake,
and one day,
a decade has faded
She says she, too, is beginning to feel time
etch the whispers of wrinkle architects
ripples undulating in the river of skin
I share that I have stopped counting the platinum hairs,
like tiny lightning rods setting up shop in my follicles,
slowly nudging out the honey brown color that once lived there.
as poets, this home of skin is one we are always
spinning in our palms
She speaks of the neighbors,
wild scarlet guacamayas,
two crayon-hued companions who have
tea parties in the treetops
and how, with raucous sqwuaks and entitlement,
alight on her mornings,
She knows they won't stay long and
watches them lift
higher than the town,
higher than the weary hearts of
those who dwell below treetops
I visit for her mountaintop wedding
and again come face-to-face with the country that
saved my life
the guacamayas screech their arrival,
unbridled chromatic sages,
punctuating the calm expanse of cerulean sky
wings draped in the colors of the Colombian flag
The skies ring deeper and taller and the eyes of time feel less watchful here
in this 16th century village of
cobblestone and whitewashed stone
after the wedding
the newlyweds are in Panama so
I dine alone and loneliness begins to dock
at my shores
I wonder where solitude draws
its edges,
wonder about when and why it is
a vessel receiving
or
a cup held out in want
Here in California,
I snail my way around,
balancing a thirst for a
home I have yet to taste
eyes wild with the humidity of longing
constantly quelling the inferno
that eats and feeds my melody
I am perched in LA now
where skies are short and ready
but the wild parrots have found me even here
have called to me through the din of police helicopters
and I know I am
Lifting
I am learning to hold out the cup
I am learning how to pour.