Ever a model for genocide, we tattoo your image to the backs of our hands. Your body, the length of an index finger, points us towards understanding pain without hope. When is the struggle meaningless? You tell me—grin your insect grin affixed like nothing mortal—when thirty thousand bees fail to beat your thirty. Nature’s abattoir, with angelic grace you divest the bees of their honey and, an afterthought, their heads as well, your movements economical, as routine as a smoker opening a pack, slipping free a cigarette, touching flame to paper, paper to lips, and when the smoke clears the ground is littered with bodies. O honey, your sweetness is no salve! Oh, honey, your touch is a branding iron, and the smoke is my skin in your mouth.
Andrew Kozma's poems have appeared in Blackbird, The Believer, Redactions, and Bennington Review. His first book of poems, City of Regret (Zone 3 Press, 2007), won the Zone 3 First Book Award. His second book, Orphanotrophia, was published in 2021 by Cobalt Press.
