can create workers, so the workers can

build the hive. I tell Burnens, seal it,

& he seals it, presses his

fist to the opening, becomes

their cage. If the sun breaks through

they will find a way out, made

desperate by the hint of distant nectar,

tear a hole like a thought in their wall.

Virgin Queen

Utterly desired, translucent

body, wings

never tried, wax-sealed until

ready. The nurses feed me from their own

mouths

& I am changed,

made essential. They guard me

with their lives. Around us

comb spirals out, first

the lesser eggs, then stores

of pollen, honey pockets. I hear

a roar, an enormous wind,

twenty thousand

fanning my nectar. I’ll gnaw my

way out, soon, smell

where the other virgins sleep,

trapped

in that perfection forever.

Drones

We are made of waiting—

attendants tend the queen, nurses

nurse the grubs, we roam

the brood, sicken ourselves on honey

we did nothing to produce. Foragers

return with more, we rub against

their sexless bodies, taste

where they’ve been, this outside

coming in. A virgin grows in a guarded

cell, ripening on

rare jelly, we wait for her

to emerge. First she will kill

the other virgins, those

unborn, a spike

to the head, then lead us into a cloud

& fuck us in the air. Spacious

inside her, the root breaks off

to pump forever there. We

wait. The workers—

they would smother us all

if not for her.

Twinned

To exist wholly in another, seamless,

mirrored. Think of the hive,

at each turn we find ourselves, not

a version, not a replica,

but our whole selves. Love,

you claim, comes close to this,

no space

between your words, a hand

over the other’s heart. How do you live

with this distance? I have you, she

thinks, or, I know you,

but she can never say, I am you.

Blind Huber (v)

Before shadows I saw the rose,

saw its thorn,

a bee navigating, never impaled.

I no longer know what is outside my mind

& what is in.

It must be the sun … there wasn’t anything here but the sun in the first place … earth came out of the sun, and we came out of the earth …

—Major Amberson, The Magnificent Ambersons, upon dying

Inside Nothing

A sun-fed engine, the inside

constant, a flower taken

whole. In winter our wings

move faster, to keep the sun

inside, inside nothing

& we fill the nothing with suns,

line them up,

swallow sap, swallow

field, drop by drop, each stem

a pump. Rose to rose to rose to

rose to rose to rose to rose, calyx &

anther, all summer

gone. We move

still faster, fields grow

constant, inside

the color of heat. Clinging we

pull our bodies

across a chain of bodies, become

the chain, climb nothing,

always

up, toward suns, line them up

inside us, a flower taken whole,

a field built inside. It rises.

Each blade, each sun.

Blind Huber (vi)

Our words mingle &