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published
in Dark Horse, No. 20
spit and sting
I’m
moved to hold something so odd.
Tiny
wasps’ nest, a spit-lantern,
air
made visible, grey with industry.
It’s
alive, as if they were still there,
patterned
to mandible rhythm,
a
sightless drumming, a dancing
shawl
swung from a brooch of little cells.
Half
a gram homed eighty wasps;
space
ship rooted to its gantry,
poised
to summer launch.
Empty,
its heart rolls around inside:
it
will not be held. To deserving endeavours
crumbles
like a clawed-up mummy.
If
we made a dust house
it
would be like this.
We
would keep all our nothings
in
its spiral arms. It would quiver
with
vulnerable anger.
If
dust thought,
its
dry tongue
would
burst and make a universe
of
stinging speech.
Pamela Coren
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last
update:
e-mail
Pamela
poetry favourites:
Laurel
Books
and in
the
shop
...
collection -
"The
Blackbird Inspector",
Laurel Books
in anthologies
-
"A Twist of Malice",
Grey Hen Press;
"Reverie",
Norwich Writers' Circle
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