Maya C. Popa

 

 

Wound is the Origin of Wonder

 

The bee that worshiped the mouths of those flowers
dropped from your window like a spent priest,
its thud comedic in the coded silence.
You were making a change to the order of your hours,
had announced as much in the prior moment,
and if I thought of Virgil’s Georgics, it was only
not to mention them. I brought my eye
to its abdomen, offered an ounce of my human life.
What would you do with the knowledge
that I’d grieve for a bee? Someone like me
could be played by the threat of endings.
I’ll lose you one day, have lost you always,
a long ongoing Westwardness of thought,
my Blue Period; oh fond, formidable ghost.
It’s not metaphor that bees make honey
of themselves while language only dreams
the hunted thing. Let’s be hungry a little
while longer. Let’s not hurt each other if we can.

 


Maya C. Popa is the author of American Faith, published by Sarabande Books in 2019She is the Poetry Reviews Editor at Publisher’s Weekly and director of the Creative Writing Program at the Nightingale-Bamford School in New York City. She is a PhD candidate at Goldsmiths, University of London.


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