Arsenic Lobster poetry journal
Issue Nineteen
Spring 2009
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Who Will Tell the Bees?
Lois P. Jones

Little brownies, Little brownies
your mistress is dead. . .

 —traditional Greek invocation

When you fell, bumbles burst--
a spume of blood on the black
and white tiles. They hovered

round your mind
and all you could do was hum
drowned out by the siren’s wail.

Your mouth opened
and closed as you sucked air
through your abdomen, hind wings

fluttering to regain flight. You fought
until they removed your stinger,
put you down in honey-eyed sleep.

Look at your face

swollen to an angry bump, mouth
twisted beyond the body’s gloom.
A tube curls into proboscis
in this frigid room.

Let them tell the bees

I will not rattle the keys on the roof
of your hive. They snatched you
from me, left the poison, left the poison
of good-bye.

About Lois P. Jones

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