"Unacknowledged Pollinators" by Fady Joudah

"If you were a star," you said, "you'd be called Forgive me." 

Support Poem-a-Day February 11, 2020   Unacknowledged Pollinators Fady Joudah   "If you were a star," you said, "you'd be called Forgive me." To which I smiled (you couldn't see me) and said, "Or Forgive me not." You said "Beware the ides of March on days we're distant from bees and flowers." "Not if the bees in the mouth don't sting," I said, "and the air we move is a monk's in a meditative year." "Are we the plants or the particles, the planets or the elements?" you asked, "and our touchless touching, vector-dependent sex, and the honey mouth, are they the silences that waggle the tune on our foraging routes?" "When I say honey," I clarified, "I'm asking you whose pollen you contain. We're no snowflake symmetry yet to each pollen grain its aperture: porous, colpate, yet blanketing the earth as crystals might, and light isn't refused." "And when I say honey," you said "I grip my sweetness on your life, on stigma and anthophile, and the soporific folded on its synchronous river that doesn't intend to dissect my paradise." "O captive my captive, we lost and what did love gain," I asked, "I haven't fallen from where I haven't been, or exited what I didn't enter." "Seen or unseen," you said, "I'll live in your mouth. We have an extra room. The children like it there, mead in it their stories and playdough." "As if a child is the cosmic dust that made me, and I'm the suffix, its -ide." "And within that child a child." "And within that another." Copyright © 2020 by Fady Joudah. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on February 11, 2020, by the Academy of American Poets. "This poem was in conversation with Carolina Ebeid's fantastic book of poems You Ask Me to Talk about the Interior and with Hayan Charara's wonderful poem 'Bees, Honeycomb, Honey.' What's poetry without an attempted conversation with bees, a processing of a language and music, a labor and taste that contribute to our world?"  —Fady Joudah  Fady Joudah's most recent poetry collection is Footnotes in the Order of Disappearance (Milkweed Editions, 2018). Footnotes in the Order of Disappearance (Milkweed Editions, 2018) "Elegy with Apples, Pomegranates, Bees, Butterflies, Thorn Bushes, Oak, Pine, Warblers, Crows, Ants, and Worms" by Hayan Charara read more "[You Ask Me to Talk About the Interior]" by Carolina Ebeid read more Thanks to Roger Reeves, author of King Me (Copper Canyon Press, 2013), who curated Poem-a-Day for this month's weekdays. Read an extended Q&A about Reeves' curatorial approach and find out more about our guest editors for the year. Make a one-time contribution to help us publish Poem-a-Day.   Make your support go further by enrolling in monthly giving and joining the Mug Club! From Our Sponsors Copyright © 2020 The Academy of American Poets, All rights reserved. You are receiving this email because you opted in via our website. Our mailing address is: The Academy of American Poets 75 Maiden Lane St #901 New York, NY 10038 Add us to your address book Want to change how you receive these emails? You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list.