Elegy for My Father’s Nineteen Year-Old Body
in the Lamama Experimental Theatre Company Archives
Chiara Di Lello
Waltz of the Curlies
Monty Reid
That a body could be a thing to love and
live in. If I could have seen it twenty years ago:
you hanging by the arms from another man
in nothing but sandals and loincloth
your feet hovering pointed above the floor
stagelights afire in the frizz of your big hair
and shading in the lines of your torso and thigh—
not quite thirteen, I went jogging on vacation with you
down the boardwalk in too much heat and counted it good
our bodies things to be improved by loss
how I counted us kin in this
as you blended powder into shakes even though
you were the last I’d tell about my dressing room fits
diet sodas and lunches skipped—
the play is about desire thwarted
and the man sitting on you in one picture
who loves the man directing you
becomes famous and the man you clasp in another picture
dies and you are a dancer until you aren’t anymore
but if I could have known
this you, if you had let him
live, let him mean everything
meant by those hands and arms and thighs
do you know what it would have meant to know you
do you know what it would have meant to me
Chiara Di Lello is a queer writer and educator. She loves coffee, art, and bees, and unequivocally supports the movement for Palestinian liberation. Her chapbook, CHILDLESS MILLENNIAL, was published by Game Over Books in 2026. Her poems have appeared in Stonecoast Review, Ninth Letter, Alocasia, and elsewhere and have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. Born and raised in New York City, she now resides in the so-called Hudson Valley. Find Chiara on Instagram or BlueSky.
Monty Reid is an Ottawa poet. He has coupled a 30-year career in museums (Provincial Museum of Alberta. the Royal Tyrrell Museum, Canadian Museum of Nature) with an even longer career as a poet. He has published a dozen full-length collections and almost 30 chapbooks with small presses across Canada and abroad. A new collection, Intelligence 1.1, is forthcoming from the University of Calgary Press and he is currently completing Intelligence 1.2. He worked for Arc Poetry Magazine for many years and was the Director of VerseFest, Ottawa’s international poetry festival, for almost a decade. Now retired, he can be found in his backyard garden, trying to grow peaches. Find Monty on BlueSky and Instagram.