These two poems, each about opposing seasons in their own way, focus the reader’s eye sharply to a point. While “Honeybee Exodus” is certainly more optimistic than “A House Catches Fire in South Carolina,” the two share a kind of bleak outlook, particularly in relation to the natural world. The fact that both feature latent references to violence makes these pieces feel full, inhabited, and characterized by a unique intentionality of phrase. The ending line of both pieces feel somehow similar, if not connected: “What used to be a window is coughing up pitch” from “A House,” whereas its counterpart finishes “to turn this plot of sky into an exit wound.” Exit wounds, sounds that “paw into” skulls, and above it all a sky that is punctured while it eats wood smoke. Together, Erin Weeks’ poems feel inhabitable and colorful, if even a touch dangerous. —Pat Miller, poetry editor
A House Catches Fire in South Carolina
by Erin Weeks
January’s cold keeps the stench suspended.
Plastisol and pond scum, Alaskan cedar burning into a memory.
I am a country mile from the rest of the world and
beneath the back porch’s collapsing chest
puppies scuttle sweetly across glass and rubble.
Somewhere their mother’s yelp tumbles into a loon call. The sound
paws its way into my skull and plants its mange there.
I am standing in wet dirt and trying to be a daisy while
Leatherface in denim smiles with a row of teeth like a wounded fence.
The house is only a husk now, its open body facing the water;
What used to be a window is coughing up pitch.
Honeybee Exodus
by Erin Weeks
On this day, they do not land on our outstretched hands.
Instead, they part our hair, somersaulting through,
bouncing from our shoulders, never resting.
Thousands of sundrops regard us with tender disinterest
as we stand inside their transitory cloud.
The backyard honeybees are going away;
half of the hive has outgrown itself and will
begin again in the knot of some tree.
Until then, they swarm with anticipation,
an abundance of wings flaunting goodbye,
the sound an extraordinary engine
as miniature bodies wait for the signal
to turn this plot of sky into an exit wound.
Erin Weeks is a poet and journalist from Georgia with South Carolina roots. Her work has been published by Chicago Review of Books, Inkfish Magazine, The Imagist and Superpresent. A short collection of her poems, “Origins of My Love,” was published by Bottlecap Press in 2022.
Leave a Reply