Studies show that a human brain keeps churning after the heart stops beating. No such study has been conducted with bumblebees.
i.
Monkshood is best
flower
for resting
as rain drip
drips, there is
bergamot, sweet
milkweed, snapdragon
forest, red, red
spider perched
cricket, nest
blue-tit
eggs, hello
butterfly.
ii.
The 2015 Paris Agreement committed global leaders to limit global warming to under 2 degrees, and as close as possible to 1.5 degrees. We are currently headed for 4-5 degrees increase in temperature. At the rate of 2 degrees warming, 18% of all insect species will be lost by 2100; at 3.2 degrees, this figure increases to 49%. Bumblebees are particularly at risk.
After
drip, drip
where is
monkshood, where is
bergamot, no
milkweed, no
forest, where is
forest,
red, red,
hot
concrete,
ploughed
field, ploughed
people,
where is
spider, no
water.
iii.
‘as late capitalism writhed in its internal decision concerning whether to destroy earth’s biosphere or change its rules’ —Kim Stanley Robinson
As monks,
black-hooded
antenna
bowed, we
mourn
green sphynx
moth & grass
dart butterfly –
they too have
lost their
nesting –
remember
us & tiger
beetles in
buttercup
meadows,
at least
there are still
buttercups,
if only
buttercups.
—
Maia Elsner grew up between Oxford and Mexico City, and began writing poems in Massachusetts, USA. Her poems are published or forthcoming in Colorado Review, The Missouri Review, The Carolina Quarterly, Magma, Stand, Blackbox Manifold and Willow Springs, among others. She was shortlisted for the 2019 White Review Poetry Prize and the 2020 Mairtín Crawford Award for Poetry, and commended for the 2020 Geoff Stevens Memorial Prize. Her poems have been anthologized in Un Nuevo Sol: British LatinX Writers (flipped eye, 2019), Field Notes on Survival (Bad Betty Press, 2020), Live Canon 2020 Anthology (Live Canon, 2020) and Crossing Lines: An Anthology of Immigrant Poetry (Broken Sleep Books, 2020).
Artwork by: Inge Maria
