~ Delta Poetry Review ~

A. Benét

Summer In Virginia Meant

outside called our names more than our mothers,

      & we raced out the door, skipped to stay

in the air a little longer. We became the swamp, blood

      —red as the maple tree’s leaves, as bright

as our strawberry knees, ripe-bruised, ready to be plucked.

      I hiked my checkered dress up more, swirled honey

between the hallowed ground, danced with a colony

      of bees as they flew from one

to the other across my body. Later, I will tell myself

      they saw family there, wanted something

from me I couldn’t give, left a piece of themselves

      behind, enough to make me pass out & wake

to my mother’s hum, a white ocean above me, pilled

      friction against my back, a steady beat

of blood in my thigh which blossomed into a small dune.

      I cried when my aunt told me bees die after stinging,

blamed myself for taking what defined them, never wore

      that dress again. Sometimes, when I see a hive, I stand

still, so still, I grow roots. Sometimes, I dance, make myself

      the center of it all.

A. Benét is a Black, Queer poet, and MFA student at San Diego State University. Her poems have been nominated for the Best of the Net Anthology and have been published in LETTERS Journal, Foglifter Press, Honey Literary, and more. You can find her on BlueSky @benetthewriter.