TURBINE | KAPOHAU

REBECCA HAWKES

Poem for my wife

you and I know best where honey comes from
the throbbing body              the hidden sting
and it happened you did not hesitate to feed the bee
crawling sluggishly to the lace at your hem
as though you were the largest flower ever
which is a comparison of some merit    my gross orchid     
colossal peony        tremendous gardenia      
I could go on       don’t blush so
it is a treasure to me      that you are always lifting 
your ruddy face     and your skirts      to the sun         

proceeding with a blossom’s sense of duty
you lifted the lost forager on your fingers
guessed at her mood from the flex of her antenna
and pulsing abdomen      you mixed her a sip of sugar water
then sent her on the breeze             later we discussed
our admiration of bees     their downy striations
their hardy protestant work ethic    though on principle
we did not agree with the rigidity     of their class system 

and it seems neither did she     our honeybee returned to us
days later        as a sort of woman      her hands full of honey
nearly solid in its comb         and a clotted choir of her old swarm       
humming their perplexity        as she came     
shaking her lovely lower body
in a dance of gratitude        

she had not yet mastered speech          
though we could not doubt her story as we understood it
Melissa      for this was the name we gave her
was visibly unused to reliance on pumping lungs      
her organs no longer awash in hemolymph     
and her too few limbs seemed hardly able to grip 
without their barbs      though need I say 
what she missed most dearly were the wings

they were still attached when she arrived
shimmering chitin grown proportional to her human torso but
even with those muscles rippling like a horse’s flank 
you could see the wings were so heavy          
they dragged her back         to what she had once been              
and the veins in them      like wrought iron
castle gates or dense black brambles 
half horrifying       though the wings held the evening 
light as well as any church window   
or better       if you say so   

we did what any well meaning couple would do
didn’t we darling      we took her in      clad the little lady    fed her 
sweet tea and shortbread         prepared the good quilt for the spare bed
and as she was sleeping           sharpened the pruning shears

we unpacked our traditional beekeeping garb
from our wedding        billowing in linen and leather 
with woven wicker baskets over our faces
and a soothing spell of smoke       a simple but pleasant fragrance
of charring pine needles     egg cartons      and dry manure
the act itself took longer than expected
yet Melissa made hardly a sound of complaint          
as each wing finally came loose at the stump
and rustled down the side of the mattress

in fairness our poor thing never said a great deal       
at first when she opened her mouth         golden nectar drooled out      
then later a pour of darker liquid    thick and sour
though she would choke a word out upon request 
and when the whim moved her
she had a knack for prophecy     suddenly trilling such things as
every summer will be the hottest summer yet
for ever and ever amen unwinding the bar graphs
on their incline like the thriving reeds whistling 
from the estuary that will swallow your willful stupidity 
I hope to see all this the sea taking apart your house 
board by rotting board         and sucking you sickos down 
at that time we found it prudent not to take such outbursts too seriously
if her eyes started to glow          from behind their many facets    
we simply excused ourselves from polite company
           this being before all the business with the venom

though in a way I miss that too    no dear
I don’t regret how you ended it           come   let me clasp you
it brought us together           forgive me
my sentimentality        of course this was all such a long time ago
but sometimes I wake again to the angry hive like singing hail 
throwing their thousandfold bodies against the windows      
and you are still pulling 
greasy hanks of her black and blonde hair 
out of the shower drain         even now     while I set about
adding the plague of peacocks 
that have descended so iridescently on our settlement
to the regional council’s pest management plan