Poetry Showcase: Elena S. Kotsile

Bio: Elena S. Kotsile (pen name) is a scientific editor (B.Sc., M.Sc, PhD) with a background in molecular biology and immunology and a writer based in Berlin, Germany. Her creative words have appeared in Acropolis Journal, The Bear Creek Gazette, Grim & Gilded, Air & Nothingness press, Rabid Oak, Anti-Heroin Chic, and Greek journals and anthologies. Apart from scientific articles, she writes poetry and speculative fiction in English and Greek and queries for her first speculative novel. SFPA member. Twitter handle @Elena_Beate

Ursa Major gliding over pines

Eonian darkness
Embraces my scattered
Existence

Below, Cimmerian 
Sea mirrors my seven
Stars as my

Eighth concealed light meta-
morphoses sacred springs
                                         frozen lakes 

Last known occurrence

I hover over structured assemblages;
stalagmites made of faunal deposits,
tectonic teeth consisted of artefacts,
plastic, damaged tissue and decaying rain-
forest—spatiotemporal lithic ruins
from five hundred thousand years ago when
the Sea rose up under a burning Sun
carrying away skulls and leg bones, hoarding 
death over newly-formed steppes. I bestow
my shadow upon the last dying remnants
of earthlings once inhabitants of this
island, as we are now in this frail speck
of Space—I shiver fantasizing about 
future floods eroding my aching skin

Sweet-smelling Mentha

you dry me, you dilute and drink me
you rub my oblong leaves on your chest
did you know I became small for love?
I used to swim in lamentation’s deep

waters, flowing cold under the 
earth, before I danced naked 
at the mountain’s foot,
before I fell in love

—melancholy and 
unseen soil
my chthonic king
my dark ruler—

I used to swim with the dead
in the abysmal caves of my sorrow


                                       Kallisto was here
  

Dismantle my person
Disperse my pieces
What do you see?

       stardust           
ringlets
placenta                   torn
          hymen 
          claws                     broken  
              bow               

Relentless lake, cruel lake 

I could tell (this) tale, I could Listen       Once, in Arcadia–

Before being a beast, a star, a mother

I was me, myself I was