Anthropocene Anxiety Disorder

"Beauty will save the world." —Fyodor Dostoyevsky

I could write a gorgeous poem
about the hollow hives—

their many minute evictions,
their delicate wax-paper brittled

& lifted like makeshift kites
by the warm evening wind—

but beauty will not save the bees.
Late morning, a drone buzzing

listlessly against a sunflower
rotting on the stalk, pale motes

of mold coating its fur. Dark
bands interrupted so the drone

almost resembles a tiny skull.
I hope that one day, every fig

hatches like an egg. Its wasp-gut
yolk molted into so many gold

-maned bees that its knuckled dark
skin opens, an illuminated window

spilling blades of honey into the night.

 
torrin a. greathouse

torrin a. greathouse is a transgender cripple-punk, MFA candidate at the University of Minnesota, & assistant editor of The Shallow Ends. Their work is published in POETRY, Ploughshares, & The Kenyon Review. Her debut collection Wound from the Mouth of a Wound is forthcoming from Milkweed Editions in December 2020.

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