Jennifer Militello
Allergic
My mother, covered in bees. Skin swarming into
the one sad twine a road seems from this distance,
the fabric smokeless winter one can bend
to see the question break, the zero, the stalk
where it grows in the blood with the rhythm of lovers
who have nothing to lose, the cracked, inexpensive
wristwatch crystal of each wing working, a vast
collection of spectacles. She keeps still under
their dried groves, their redecorated, stemless lilies
and November’s velvet cords. Her lips hisses,
a spill of starved machines, her adrenaline lips,
her barbed wire lips, in her one eye gravel
willowing, fracture, fronds of singe.
The hours like twelve tarnished, interior birds. Countless
spores. Intravenous. My mother is covered in bees.
