Come-Hither Honeycomb
ERIN BELIEU
COPPER CANYON
PRESS
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Contents
Pity the Doctor, Not the Disease
Please Forgive Me All That I Have Ruined—
In Which a Therapist Asks for the Gargoyle Who Sits on My Chest
Always, for Jude
She notices something then that has caught on her sleeve. It is the tiniest of feathers, hardly more than a wisp of down. She detaches it carefully, meaning to inspect it more closely, but it is so slight that she cannot keep hold of it. She sees it only for an instant before the wind takes it, a thread of brightness that shivers from her fingertips and is gone.
from Paraic O’Donnell’s The Maker of Swans
come-hither
honeycomb
Instructions for the Hostage
You must accept the door is never shut.
You’re always free to leave at any time,
though the hostage will remain, no matter what.
The damage could be managed, so you thought.
Essential to the theory of your crime:
you must accept the door is never shut.
Soon, you’ll need to choose which parts to cut
for proof of life, then settle on your spine—
though the hostage will remain, no matter what.
Buried with a straw, it’s the weak who start
considering their price. You’re no great sum.
You must accept the door was never shut
and make a half-life there, aware, apart,
afraid your captor’s lost you, so far down,
though the hostage you’ll remain, no matter what.
Blink once for yes, and twice for yes—the heart
makes a signal for the willing, its purity sublime.
You must accept the door is never shut,
though the hostage will remain, no matter what.
Loser Bait
Some of us
are chum.
Some of us
are the come-hither
honeycomb
gleamy in the middle
of the trap’s busted smile.
Though I let myself a little
off this hook, petard
by which I flail,
and fancy myself more
flattered—
no ugly worm!
Humor me
as hapless nymph,
straight outta Bulfinch’s, minding
my own beeswax,
gamboling, or picking flowers
(say daffodils),
doing that unspecified stuff
nymphs do
with their hours,
until spied by a layabout youth,
or a rapey god
who