Sestina & Bees
By Matthew Sisson
Sestina
Rain, only rain, inside that house.
A grandfather. The grandmother,
silent, a child
watching by the stove.
Make dinner! Put down that almanac!
the grandfather yells. Orders and tears.
Dried flowers hang like tears
in the desiccated house.
The sun in the almanac
sharpens the shadows on the grandmother.
Sometimes they eat quietly by the stove-
for the sake of the child.
Who would abuse a child?
But soon, again- Stop those tears!
The dead, like ashes from a stove,
disperse, garrison the house,
grandfather cursing grandmother
by the tide tables in the almanac.
Wisdom and weather fill an almanac.
A guide for the living, thinks the child,
no help to grandfather or grandmother.
There is no sugar for tea-cupped tears.
No way out of this house,
laughs the pot-bellied stove.
Light the stove!
God help us! thinks the almanac.
Termites continue with the house.
I’m sorry, she says to the child.
I will stop the tears,
the child says to her grandmother.
The grandmother.
The knife by the stove.
He died pooled in blood-red tears.
End of conversation, says the almanac.
I ended the conversation says the child
dancing around the house.
Grandmother died, the child
sold the stove and inscrutable house.
What remains? Almanac nightmares and tears.
Bees
Once I had a lover so beautiful
I dreamt of bees. They showed me
their wings. Soothed me with their hum.
That hum that says in the plainest
of languages: I know who I am,
know why I’m here. When she left,
I thought about building a hive.
Designing my label, giving honey
to my friends. I wanted to make
that sound my own again. Instead
I wait, wait to meet them as they were,
so many seasons ago, once, in a dream.
Matthew Sisson’s poetry has appeared in magazines and journals ranging from JAMA The Journal of The American Medical Association to the Harvard Review Online. He has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and read his work on NPR’s “On Point.” His book Please, Call Me Moby was published by the Pecan Grove Press, St. Mary’s University, San Antonio, Texas. He was formerly the poetry editor of the trade journal Modern Steel Construction.