[09/21/26] Eleftherion, Melissa: Malocchia

White Stag Publishing, paperback

Publication Date: September 21, 2026

Publisher Marketing:

Malocchia is a collection of narrative & erasure poems that wander the haunted terrain of bloodlines, memory, & becoming. Taking its name from the feminized form of the Italian malocchio, or "evil eye", this book invokes a matriarchal inheritance through which the speaker seeks to discern their own reflection, blessing & curse entwined. This book is an excavation to uncover the relics of ancestry, confront the unseen forces that bind generations together, & explore a self that can endure beyond them. Through erasure, invocation, & revelation, Malocchia is an unflinching meditation on what we carry, what we choose to leave behind, & the possibility of forging a future beyond the weight of lineage.

Malocchia refuses to believe it is cursed.

"The myth of my Italian heritage says I may have the malocchio To be stalked by a death’s head moth To be stalked by wings I must carry a horn Stout tongue of the stigma If the oil forms an eye, your fur is mine"

-from Imaginary Elegy