"Apologia" from The Blueshift Journal "Poem Composed Entirely from the First Lines of Poems by Emily Dickinson", from Boxcar Poetry Review "How to Hurt a Fly" from Muzzle Magazine "Why We Don't Have Children" from The Ellis Review "from The Gospel of Bullets, Part II" from The Shallow Ends "Poem for My Nieces on the Eve of the Next War" from The Rise Up Review "Winter" from Milk Journal

A staring honeybee hive, exposed as it tries to find a new home, in a hole in a tree or above a door, resting now on a branch as neighborhood children throw stones and try to run as fast as laughter. It's days like today, Emily, that I miss you most. Eye of Amherst, phantom mother, here we hear what we want and nothing more. Not the screams of pulled weeds, not the calm of bees on a branch. Not the sound of a hive, how it doesn't hum but shimmers like light, somewhere between a sigh and a shadow. There's no time to explore the myths of stingers pulled out, abdomens spilling guts as a bee dies, or the stories of foreign killer bees waiting in fields and trees. No time no matter how I want to forget the legends of you wasting away in a white shawl. What is the truth, Emily? A pair of heliotropes placed in your grave, bees trying to kiss the pistils despite broken stems. And what to place in my grave other than a dried hive, the honey finally dripped away, the eggs that never hatched still glued in their holes? No time to think about my grave, the tight wood where I'll finally feel dust, where I'll give back what I've stolen from the earth. Have you heard a hive, safe in their nest, fanning the eggs, supplying the right warmth? I have to, Emily, there are more stones than children and both are slow. Let the bees forgive me for what I'm going to do. Let them be afraid, enough perhaps to find a crack in my veil. And if I remove my hood, my mask, if I give them the relief of the sting, oh Emily, could you dare me to finally breathe?