Leah Mell
Poetry
Leah Mell is a genderqueer lesbian poet and translator originally from the American South, but currently living in the Southwest. At present, she is an MFA candidate in Creative Writing at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Her obsessions lie in noir, persona, morbidity, and the queer body. She is fond of ghosts and the sea.
Ice Fishing on Europa
Imagine: a moon loves a girl
who walks on water. No, this is not a prayer,
and she is not a votive candle.
She kisses like a lullaby. Dissolves.
All she has is the icepick
in her hand. A parable
is supposed to have a moral
at the end. Hard work, mercy.
On Jupiter’s loneliest moon, she drops into the ice
and falls for fifteen miles until the sea
swallows her into its center.
Then, maybe, green.
“ I wrote ‘Ice Fishing on Europa’ about an elusive girl I was having a love affair with a few years ago. I hand-wrote an early draft on a torn slip of paper and slipped it into a book I loaned her. I don’t know if she ever read it, but I’m glad to see this poem have a new, more expansive life now. ”
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