Bee

Reese Derrenberger, "Fig," 2008

The memory of sweetness, hollowed
out. It stopped me, as I bent to pry up
milk-sapped spurge from a fissure in
the drive (for what? it won’t save the
spalled concrete)—a ruin of what was
once a honey bee, its head excavated,
sightless, resting near a broken thorax,
an empty abdomen. When I went to
look again after weeding, it was gone.
I felt as if I’d misplaced a letter sent by
an old friend, then misplaced not just
the letter, but the empty envelope, the
blue-and-white Chinese porcelain dish
where I’d set it, that I’d even misplaced
the memory of paper sacks full of sweet
honey figs still warm from his garden.

Suspended

Angelina Earley, "Vertigo," 2009

As I lay these words down I wish each
were a wooden slat bound up by strong
rope—maybe made from twisted vines,
or yucca fiber rolled into cord across our
thighs, across all the days it takes to make
a line long enough to find you. Each word
pierced for the rope, tied up and tossed
through the air, I’d watch them extend as
if they were my own hands arms spine ribs
stretching out to you, towards a place so
wholly unknown. Listening to where they
catch, to where we each tie up, both of us
at the end of every arc of our single stories
now suspended and made new, as we both
place our trust that these words will hold
us safely until we can hold one another.