Christina Veladota

A Brief Novel at the End of July

Listen to Christina Veladota read her piece:

I don’t believe the silo at night is empty until I’m inside it with music & chairs that
unfold. When I say my love I mean his body seems impossible as oceans in Ohio. Our
dogs are copies of other dogs. Suffering keeps a tally of my mild & my chronic. The sky
over the river is never a copy of another sky. It’s good for a good wind to sweep in. Pitch
is rooftop, black, & fever. Is to sing. You cannot tell words not to look the worst in the
face. My best tragedy is my tuneless voice. Sigh. Low. Impossible is the river when the
sky pitches stones on us; we cannot gather them fast enough.

Christina Veladota's poetry has been published in such literary journals as Ascent, Lake Effect, The Laurel Review, and Mid-American Review, where she is also a frequent contributor of book reviews. Two of her prose poems currently appear in the Bellingham Review's first online edition (Fall 2011). She is an assistant professor of English at Washington State Community College, in Marietta, OH.