Come-Hither Honeycomb. Erin Belieu

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      Come-Hither Honeycomb

      ERIN BELIEU

      COPPER CANYON

      PRESS

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      Thank you. We hope you enjoy these poems.

      This e-book edition was created through a special grant provided by the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation.

      Contents

       Title Page

       Note to Reader

       Instructions for the Hostage

       Loser Bait

       Pity the Doctor, Not the Disease

       In Airports

       Your Failure

       When I Am a Teenage Boy

       Hypotenuse

       The Man Who Fills In Space

       Dum Spiro Spero

       Sundays

       Please Forgive Me All That I Have Ruined—

       In Which a Therapist Asks for the Gargoyle Who Sits on My Chest

       As for the Heart

       She Returns to the Water

       A Few Notes about the Poems

       About the Author

       Also by Erin Belieu

       Acknowledgments

       Copyright

       Special Thanks

      Always, for Jude

      She notices something then that has caught on her sleeve. It is the tiniest of feathers, hardly more than a wisp of down. She detaches it carefully, meaning to inspect it more closely, but it is so slight that she cannot keep hold of it. She sees it only for an instant before the wind takes it, a thread of brightness that shivers from her fingertips and is gone.

      from Paraic O’Donnell’s The Maker of Swans

      come-hither

      honeycomb

      Instructions for the Hostage

      You must accept the door is never shut.

      You’re always free to leave at any time,

      though the hostage will remain, no matter what.

      The damage could be managed, so you thought.

      Essential to the theory of your crime:

      you must accept the door is never shut.

      Soon, you’ll need to choose which parts to cut

      for proof of life, then settle on your spine—

      though the hostage will remain, no matter what.

      Buried with a straw, it’s the weak who start

      considering their price. You’re no great sum.

      You must accept the door was never shut

      and make a half-life there, aware, apart,

      afraid your captor’s lost you, so far down,

      though the hostage you’ll remain, no matter what.

      Blink once for yes, and twice for yes—the heart

      makes a signal for the willing, its purity sublime.

      You must accept the door is never shut,

      though the hostage will remain, no matter what.

      Loser Bait

      Some of us

      are chum.

      Some of us

      are the come-hither

      honeycomb

      gleamy in the middle

      of the trap’s busted smile.

      Though I let myself a little

      off this hook, petard

      by which I flail,

      and fancy myself more

      flattered—

      no ugly worm!

      Humor me

      as hapless nymph,

      straight outta Bulfinch’s, minding

      my own beeswax,

      gamboling, or picking flowers

      (say daffodils),

      doing that unspecified stuff

      nymphs do

      with their hours,

      until spied by a layabout youth,

      or a rapey god

      who