My Stomach Sends Me Honey
Sonja Johanson


 
Burbling in its mason jar, a heavy quart
dripping from the silver lid like venom.
 
My stomach keeping vespids, no surprise –
a hive of angry women in the belly
 
daughters folded softly in their waxy beds.
Bees, the way they choose, every swarm
 
a dance of abdomens, each defense
a desperate lunge, a last resort decision.
 
My stomach sends me nectar from last
summer, bargains made of memory;
 
I have an appetite for flowers, she stings me
in the middle, sends me rumbling on the inside,
 
my stomach fills a hundred hollow trees
with viscous gold. The honey pours like warnings,
 
it pours like things she never told me, we search
for cavities where we can keep each other warm.
 

  


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About the Author:  Sonja Johanson has recent work appearing in the Best American Poetry blog, BOAAT, Epiphany, and The Writer’s Almanac. Her chapbooks include Impossible Dovetail (IDES, Silver Birch Press), all those ragged scars (Choose the Sword Press), and Trees in Our Dooryards (Redbird Chapbooks). You can follow her work here.
GRAVEL