Feast with a Mouthful of Bees
       

I was doomsday's daughter, ignoring the hum
of everyday ungilded twitching things.
Ecstatic, enraged, brimming with questions
and lies, I stumbled through violent
and ordinary times with a drink in each hand,
my head crowded with cusses and snark
and the sound of me screaming underwater.
Razor days—I'd rather cough up fishhooks
than try to understand. Long list of harms
with wonders mixed in—can it be enough?
The words sting—bees on my tongue.
I vibrate from the inside out. I call on strangers
to testify that sometimes I weep for no reason,
that clover fills my footsteps as foretold.

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Copyright © 2022 Alison Pelegrin All rights reserved
from Bennington Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission