Archive
Hive
The queen is in her cell hanging upside down feeding on royal jelly taken from the heads of young workers who are preparing to swarm, but meanwhile gather nectar from flowers that grow on the girl.
She is lying in the field naked on her back, blossoms growing from her bosom.
The nectar they find there is the sweetest they have ever known, the workers dizzy with its confection.
She stays very still while the bees hover and sweep, sipping from golden cups.
They stagger-fly back to the hive to care for the brood in the broodcomb, their honey-stomachs gurgling already at the thought of the impending regurgitation and re-ingestion and re-regurgitation.
The virgin queen stirs, unaware another virgin queen waits on the other side, and another, each a rival.
The girl on her back in the field is virginal in the green dress of grasses that partly conceal her. She thinks nothing of the bees but looks beyond them to the sky which seems to her a floor upon which bees are dancing.
The queens chew doors into the caps of their cells and emerge like light.
The larvae sleep selflessly in the comb. The drones take the old queen to bed. The new queen kills her rivals.
Bees comb the girl’s hair with their wings until the swarm cracks the hive, and they fly off into beginning.
by Cati Porter
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Hymenoptera
Your hand could lift as the sun and, certainly as bright,
would fill the air, but a longer circumstance still draws
no raised hand.
“Yes? Anyone?”
Nine days are nine tortures, your stubborn tongue tall
as summer mercury goes, but a mouth that will not hinge.
“The order of yellow jackets? Does anyone know?”
A hand goes up, and then yours. The sun, yes.
The other student is called and states.
“Arachnid.”
“No, that’s spiders and scorpions.”
Instruction levels its eyes at you, new to the school,
nine days, and points its hand.
“The order of yellow jackets, do you know?”
You still have no voice. You shake your ghastly head.
You can’t know.
“Are you sure?”
Sure if you could answer, shyly at last.
by Ray Succre
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(haiku)
greenness
of an inchworm crossing
tree rings
by Michael Nickels-Wisdom
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Cockroach Poem
I am not afraid of the obviously dangerous; can appreciate
the snake, his contractions and curls, the calligraphic language
of his body in motion; or the spider and her radial body,
her windowpane webs gathering gnats and beading the dew.
But you, what purpose do you serve besides your own ugliness,
lurking in lightless places, defying my appointments
with the exterminator, my daily cleanings, my commitment not
to attract your kind. Last night I heard you whispering
through the air filter in my bedroom, the soft
and unmistakable grating of your wings like skin peeling,
like an unfolding letter of condolence, the black
almond of your head poking through a white slat,
just for a moment, then disappearing, continuing to scratch
inside the air shaft long after I went to bed.
In the morning I pulled the filter out of its frame,
found your crisp and iridescent body wedged into thick lint
and filter fibers. Because of your size, I can determine
you don’t live inside, that you come from one
of the chokecherry trees in my front yard, but it doesn’t matter.
I imagine you everywhere that is dark and unacceptable,
a little raisin shell skittering over plates and guest towels
and spoons, like an undeniable truth, like a haunt
across a grave, dragging your armor of indifference.
by Cynthia Cox
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Rustle
Are you Monarch or moth
or some manner of the Ten
Thousand Things?
First, you light my hair
azure against black, my ladies
hushed and gasping as you breathe
your wings open and closed.
Another, midnight sky caught
where my robes brush the floor.
Their chatter dies with the two
perched — one on each wrist — pieces of summer
sky between swiftly swimming clouds.
I reach down, nothing moving
but the steady winking of your blue
wings, and tug undone my obi.
Silk after silk kimono
flare out, loose, edges lining
my bare breasts, pelvis, inner thigh
in the moonlight. One gentle shrug
and they all fall to the floor.
In handfuls of color you cover
me, midnight at my ankle, cold
dawn my crown, shallow ocean
cupping curve to curve to curve.
Small bodies, thin filaments of sky
and sea, hold such heat!
I turn in wonder, the small gusts
brushing my skin, raise my right wrist
to cover my mouth to laugh with joy,
when I hear you singing.
This is the chrysanthemum sound
I keep with me as you lift
in a single motion, as I pool naked
on my side on the floor, as ten years
pass in this forgotten palace wing until
my hair is cut to tonsure and I serve
the Buddha, this the one song on his lips,
never again having seen the face of my Prince.
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Butterflies: How and Why
As well confuse moths with mouths
as with these lips that chap to chrysalis.
Inside a milky saliva thickens.
At the end, no silky escape, but a storm:
Crack, a blood rain, and the mouths
stagger out. They stutter by day
and when they stop, purse themselves,
the rich silent type, unlike moths
which flutter by night and light open,
more generous relations,
willing to tell everyone.
by Diane Kendig
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Call for Submissions: Insecta
We’re pleased to announce a new issue and an intriguing new theme, Insecta. Here’s how the guest editors describe it:
We live in a kingdom of insects. Glancing from the infinitesimally small fairyfly to the giant stick insect, we find that this is a weird and various world. The catalogue of nocturnal moths, thrips, butterflies, caddisflies, angel insects, snow fleas, bristletails, mayflies, silverfish, and bugs is endless and the names evocative.
For this issue of qarrtsiluni, we are interested in art — poem, painting, story, nonfiction, photograph — inspired by insects. We are equally interested in writing about insects, being just as enamored by Thoreau’s ant battle in Walden as Frost’s butterflies, “Tossed, tangled, whirled and whirled above, / Like a limp rose-wreath in a fairy dance.”
We expect a wild variety of explorations on this subject, with work undergoing that mysterious metamorphosis of revision, to be finally shined up to a high beetle-like polish. In insects, the final step in transformations leads to the fully-formed imago — Latin plural, imagines.
There’s a 1500-word limit for prose this time, and a 50-line limit for poems. Please include no more than four poems or six images per submission, and wait two weeks after your first submission before sending a second. Submissions will be considered until December 15, for publication throughout November and December. For the rest of our submission guidelines, see the How to Contribute page.
The editors for this issue are two of the hardest working writers we know. Ivy Alvarez (website, blog) is an Australian poet currently living in Cardiff, Wales. She’s the author of Mortal (Red Morning Press, 2006), and recently received grants from the Australia Council for the Arts and Academi to write poems for her second manuscript. In addition to poetry, she also writes plays, reviews and articles. Her co-editor, Marly Youmans (website, blog) is the author of seven books: four novels or novellas, two fantasies set in the Southern Appalachians, and a collection of poems, Claire (Louisiana State University Press, 2003). A native of the Carolinas, she lives in Cooperstown, New York.
- In other news, we’ve added an expanded copyright statement to the submission guidelines, asserting the acquisition of one-time and non-exclusive anthology rights. In addition, we attempted to clarify our position on previously blogged material:
In general, submissions of writing should not have been previously blogged or published elsewhere, though we do make exceptions for pieces that appeared in the author’s own blog, if the appearance was temporary or of an earlier draft.
While we do want qarrtsiluni to be a repository of original writing, we also want to encourage the growth of a literary blogging culture, so writers shouldn’t feel that they can’t submit something simply because an earlier version of it appeared on their blog.
We welcome feedback on these changes, and any other critiques or suggestions you might have.
–Beth Adams and Dave Bonta
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qarrtsiluni 