Mad Honey
By Tarik Dobbs
I didn’t get bees until violence.
Until the battlefields bittered
Our pollen, its gun-powered honey
Collected from colony to colony:
The Lebanon to The Ukraine.
My mother’s metallic spit. Her tongue
In the mirror. The grayed burst coaxing
Her larynx, invisible. A mandated moment,
Its promise to history. Along the Black Sea,
War was waged, reddened.
A hallucinogenic tint to be measured,
As always, the dose makes
This syrup, poisoned. A promise
The bees dead someday, just like us.
