"Queenless Roar" by Nicholas Weaver
The following poem is a brief selection from our Fall/ Winter 2019 print issue, accompanied by an audio recording of the poet reading their work. Click here to purchase the full issue, which features poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and art by more than 30 brilliant contributors.
QUEENLESS ROAR
I’m watching Notre Dame burn down on my phone, and no one is calling
me back, so I have no one to talk to about my main worry, which is for the
bees in the upper levels, which have enough problems as it is with colony
collapse disorder. I love bees: when I’m stressed out, I sometimes like to
visualize a beekeeper slowly removing the wax caps off a tray of honey
with a hot iron spade. Although they say smoke merely makes bees drunk,
I’m worried what might happen to the Notre Dame hives if they lose their
queen. The constant droning buzz of a hive without its mother, abandoned, may eventually drive the worker bees inside to suicide, the noise may make them forget how to age gracefully, how to die naturally, they may start only being able to love like crushing teenagers do, they’ll act melodramatic, they’ll never want to grow up, and start hoarding pollen in an attempt to stay young. Without a queen, the honeybees won’t know how to fill their larval chambers with royal jelly, won’t know how it is you swarm around a wasp en masse, begin writhing, and liquefy the intruder with pure body heat. A bee might get confused, and lonely for guidance, follow a siren call away from the hive. This might happen individually, then in groups, until inevitably, without care, the whole structure implodes, along with the cathedral spire.
Nicholas Weaver is a teaching artist and spoken-word performer, with work appearing in This Land Press, Columbia Poetry Review, and others. He lives in Oklahoma, where he enjoys daydreaming about ocean trenches and postapocalyptic wastelands.
