others’ mouths cannot form without us threw open her hands
into raw unsewn
sparks set loose like bees glistening
air
selva obscura crimson clover
dark woods dark words where is everyone
hiding
frayed, sentient
jesus
in fields of the missing
do you remember birds
it was shame that lit me like a flame
uncanny silence of empty white hive boxes
dark matter of hands
stumbled and pretending not to
ghost shirt and ghost wind
discarded container of Gaucho™ pesticide
bluebirds grassland ache
ghost dirt and “white man’s flies” and white man’s runoff
Beo-wulf, bee-man, little bison
monegum mæþum meodo-setla oftēah into the mead hall he plunges
with his shining axe his scarred and golden pelt
interstate bees, fossil-fuel bees
bees with guns, bees with suns
transported like Minutemen missiles
across prairies and test sites
nothing that is not Being or being rinsed through with dark excess my mouth
confused with night
flowers that belong to the dead, flowers that unclothe their bodies
without reserve
“the chemical warfare that is modern agriculture”
pink plastic toys lined up in the rain
multinational clothianidin dust in our furrows
coating seed corn and soy beans
finally weapons of mass destruction have been discovered
nearly invisible in living aquifers
and the pollen hair of disoriented bees
who join the disappeared of the Plaza de las Madres and those missing
on reconnaissance over napalmed Agent Orange rice fields
shining archetypes
over heartland, terra roxa, the raw purple soil of Amazonia
our everyday lives in late summer orchards
gone glottal and feral, outside our focus
blank stare of the sun
“AND YET SOMETIMES
A SILENT ANIMAL LOOKS UP AT US
AND SILENTLY LOOKS THROUGH US”
ring-necked snake your coral flower your dragonfly blue
weft, reft womb
islands your tiny furred bees your wild
hulled drunk on
countenance swims dusk coyotes our futures
virtual
ecstatic as maenads
hunger
stroking the hair of my bees
“unsteady aerodynamics,” a waxy substance from one’s own body
transparency of their flight, opacity of desire
without permission happiness happens or flesh-eating bacteria
sudden flash in near
and farther conifers the excessive yellow
and scarlet of a tanager
because “I Like America and America Likes Me”
why so bright
free-radical scavenger isotopes
unless Beauty is hell-bent
upon existing despite survival
because forever is a dream a nightmare
of the fittest automobile
free-market cloudbank like heaven, a chasm
in hedgerows, hedge funds
all life hinges
because the body is a ladder of incomparable pain
this is burning as I speak
because the body is a ladder of incomparable pain
they ran, scattered
woven with oracular bees, trembling
awaken bees, arise bees, trembling
and ran, but not fast enough
tongue to tongue, the colors, trembling
because the body is a ladder of incomparable pain
whose yellow bodies soar, trembling
where gods or God erased the people
cast off into the open, perilous
not gods or God, our warheads
pollen-filled air
scrubbed data
ethically clean
the stars on fire
Meredith Stricker is a visual artist and poet working in cross-genre media. Her forthcoming collection, re-wilding, was awarded the Dorset prize from Tupelo Press. Her other books of poetry include Our Animal (Omnidawn Open Book Prize) and Anemochore (Newfound Press). She co-directs visual poetry studio, a collaborative that focuses on architecture and other projects to bring together artists, writers, musicians, and experimental forms.
