THE BEES WEAR THEIR HEAVINESS SO WELL
by Becka Mara McKay
What an enormous amount of tinfoil
we’ll need to wrap up this wolf. I have heard
we won’t be discouraged from having beliefs
if we send flowers to the right deity.
Dismissal is the worst of the food groups:
if all else fails, then all else fails. Can’t we
leave it at that? How perfectly the walls
of the latest disappointment fit below
the roof of my mind. If this apology
sounds more like a confession to a grisly
killing, at least it comes out of my mouth
and not my ass, said my grandmother not once.
She lobbed her grief into the world like handfuls
of grit into a grave. In the years before
the detonations, we met our party
at the gate and witnessed our own reunions.
we’ll need to wrap up this wolf. I have heard
we won’t be discouraged from having beliefs
if we send flowers to the right deity.
Dismissal is the worst of the food groups:
if all else fails, then all else fails. Can’t we
leave it at that? How perfectly the walls
of the latest disappointment fit below
the roof of my mind. If this apology
sounds more like a confession to a grisly
killing, at least it comes out of my mouth
and not my ass, said my grandmother not once.
She lobbed her grief into the world like handfuls
of grit into a grave. In the years before
the detonations, we met our party
at the gate and witnessed our own reunions.
Becka Mara McKay is a poet and translator. She directs the Creative Writing MFA at Florida Atlantic University, where she serves as faculty advisor to Swamp Ape Review. Recent work has appeared in Bennington Review, Copper Nickel, Ninth Letter, Ploughshares, Poetry Northwest, Post Road, and River Styx. Her newest book of poems, The Little Book of No Consolation, is forthcoming from Barrow Street Press in spring 2021.