Melissa Eleftherion (she/they) is a writer, a librarian, and a visual artist. Born & raised in Brooklyn, she holds degrees from Brooklyn College, Mills College, and San Jose State University. They are the author of two full-length poetry collections, field guide to autobiography (The Operating System, 2018), & gutter rainbows (Querencia Press, 2025), as well as twelve chapbooks including abject sutures (above/ground press, 2025). Her work has been widely published & featured in venues like Quarter after Eight, Sixth Finch, Entropy, & Barren Magazine. Melissa now lives in Northern California where she manages the Ukiah Branch Library, curates the LOBA Reading Series, and serves as Poet Laureate Emeritus of the City of Ukiah.

Other poems on the web by Melissa Eleftherion:
"that time a tree grew out of my mouth and i had armor"
Four poems
"The Longitude of Erosion or the Meridians of Insouciance"
Three poems
Two poems
"Fith Suture"
Three poems
Two poems
"ditch poem #20"
"We built this self on the sea"

Melissa Eleftherion's Website.

About Gutter Rainbows:

"Melissa Eleftherion has conjured a spectral labyrinth of psyche and precision. The poems in this collection oscillate between the visceral and the ethereal, exploring themes of identity, desire, and existential yearning with linguistic play that is both brutal and beautiful....Here, human experiences crystallize, reflecting natural beauty and human intervention-the cuts that form gems out of us, the fractures defining our most intimate landscapes....This collection is for anyone who has felt their own fractures, who has been both mineral and sculptor in the relentless pursuit of self-definition."
—MK Chavez

"I love Melissa Eleftherion's gutter rainbows: the surprises, the intelligence, and the human stories attached to all of it. "No one owns a body," she writes, and yet the works recursively connect human to natural realms. This is a book I will return to, just to see how the poet crafts these miracles."
—Denise Low

"I've always delighted in the accumulated moments, rushes, staggers, staccatos and fragments of Melissa Eleftherion's propulsive lyric. There is such a delight of sound and rhythm, and gutter rainbows is awash with the best of what her work simultaneously provides: an anxious calm, fine precision and concussive force. Her poems are akin to the ocean: as vast and dangerous as it is deep."
—rob mclennan