- Allergic
Allergic
My mother, covered in bees. Skin swarming intothe one sad twine a road seems from this distance,the fabric smokeless winter one can bend
to see the question break, the zero, the stalkwhere it grows in the blood with the rhythm of loverswho have nothing to lose, the cracked, inexpensive
wristwatch crystal of each wing working, a vastcollection of spectacles. She keeps still undertheir dried groves, their redecorated, stemless lilies
and November's velvet cords. Her lips hisses,a spill of starved machines, her adrenaline lips,her barbed wire lips, in her one eye gravel
willowing, fracture, fronds of singe. The hourslike twelve tarnished, interior birds. Countlessspores. Intravenous. My mother is covered in bees. [End Page 158]
Jennifer Militello is the author of the chapbook Anchor Chain, Open Sail (Finishing Line Press). Her work has recently appeared or is forthcoming in AGNI Online, the Bellingham Review, the Greensboro Review, the Kenyon Review, and the Laurel Review.