Cathy’s Work

I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the (wasp). – Charles Darwin

Waning summer, Fruit sweet fermentation.

Your preference – flesh – meat – protein.

Admiration. Yellow-masked feminist.

Corseted dominatrix. Fertilization upon

Request. Determine your progeny’s sex.

Sting in frenzy at your sisters’ distress.

Heroines wearing yellow jerseys.

Catherine de Medici. Victoria. Polaire.

Laces, ivory, wood, whalebone, horn.

Fabricated diminutive corps.

Petiole between leaf and stem.

Precarious bridge. Vital suspension.

Papery brother of working girls.

I swat one into fetal curl,

as they invade my home, my place of rest.

Pheromones wake the wasps’ nest.

If I write a poem about watching fire catch a log in my fireplace,

will you say the fire is not fire and the log is something else?

If I describe how flames tickled their way to the log’s dead heart,

will you tell me it is a desire to fill a void afraid to be named?

If I tell you the log is a volcano whose fire explodes from within,

will you call my metaphor repressed sexual energy or poetic anxiety?

If I describe peeling birch bark silver and papery floating out the flue,

will you tell me my consciousness of passing time has entered the poem?

If I tell you that smoke is churning out a crevice and spinning like Dorothy Hamill,

will you say time is of the essence, so write, write, write, and stop complaining?

If I write the kindling turned to coals that would fill a Florida sunset with envy,

will you tell me to stop being jealous of other poets and find my own voice?

And if I tell you when I stoked this fire, it roared in my face,

will you say I should turn my questions into statements?

I just sat down to look at the fire, but a fire always has an opinion.