look how much you don’t keep bees

our new neighbors have a well-tended garden
with a tall wire fence around to keep out the deer,
a modest greenhouse, and chairs to sit in
and, presumably, bask in. they also have beehives—
two white boxes visible from our back door,
which honestly feels like an aggression, like
look how good we are, neighbor, tending these bees.
we, on the other hand, being city folks
from away, have not mowed once all summer,
but there is the milkweed by the driveway, so
when pressed I take credit for the monarchs
and the wild lupines by the stream blooming
abrupt purple stalks. when I say we’ve been
talking about buying a gun, I mean we are trying
to believe there is a soft future waiting for us
and we are failing. once, in Texas, a gun was placed
into my startled hands in my own living room.
it was a dainty little thing, like nettles pulled
from a handbag. I wanted to throw up.
I wanted to puncture the world, watch it spin
around the room defeated. I’ve heard a forest
cracking under a flood of winter, succumbing
one by one to the bleak pressure of a long Maine
darkness. if only I were the kind of person
who doesn’t know what ice does to trees.

Catherine Weiss is a poet and artist living in Maine. Their work has been published in Tinderbox Poetry Journal, Up the Staircase Quarterly, Counterclock, Noble / Gas Qtrly, and elsewhere. Catherine’s manuscript “unlove” was selected as a finalist for the 2019 Button Poetry Chapbook Contest. You can learn more at catherineweiss.com.