{"id":39,"date":"2018-04-08T10:57:00","date_gmt":"2018-04-08T15:57:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.muw.edu\/poetrysouth\/?p=39"},"modified":"2022-12-01T10:58:40","modified_gmt":"2022-12-01T16:58:40","slug":"honeybees","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.muw.edu\/poetrysouth\/poetry\/honeybees\/","title":{"rendered":"Honeybees"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center\"><strong>Christie Collins<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>How could I not have grieved?<br>When their bodies, poisoned into a deep<br>&amp; enduring sleep, drifted like dusty snowflakes<br>from the attic above \u2014 down, down<br>onto the ruddy linoleum floor<br>in the restroom of my therapist\u2019s office.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>When the capsules of their still bodies<br>were stepped on, crunched,<br>swept up, disposed of \u2014<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>When it took a maintenance crew<br>hours to undo their nests,<br>the impressive sheets of comb<br>that had been so carefully composed<br>from earth, paper, bits of human trash,<br>a home forged of communal tenacity, instinct.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>When the wealth of their honey,<br>that golden sea of their life\u2019s work,<br>was drained from the combs, willy-nilly,<br>into several black trash bags \u2014<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>When such a bustling city as it must<br>have been fell &amp; fell silent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I expected nothing of the afternoon,<br>no poem to unfold, no narrative to break<br>from my back like inkblotted wings.<br>But after seeing the last of their hive<br>swept up into a rusted dust pan,<br>I felt the truth of their absence.<br>I felt the early blistering of an ache &amp; an elegy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As the afternoon backbends into night,<br>I hear the memory of the&nbsp;honeybees buzzing,<br>rebuilding outside my window.<br>But, it can\u2019t be. It can\u2019t be. Their catacomb,<br>unyielding, Their bodies, only traceable<br>as tiny, magnanimous words.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-right\"><em>Issue 9, 2017, pp 14-15<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Christie Collins How could I not have grieved?When their bodies, poisoned into a deep&amp; enduring sleep, drifted like dusty snowflakesfrom the attic above \u2014 down, downonto the ruddy linoleum floorin [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.muw.edu\/poetrysouth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.muw.edu\/poetrysouth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.muw.edu\/poetrysouth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.muw.edu\/poetrysouth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.muw.edu\/poetrysouth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.muw.edu\/poetrysouth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40,"href":"https:\/\/www.muw.edu\/poetrysouth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39\/revisions\/40"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.muw.edu\/poetrysouth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.muw.edu\/poetrysouth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.muw.edu\/poetrysouth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}