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The Beekeepers

Michelle Lynch

Outside our make-shift tent

the bees are dying;

royal blood disordered

colonies collapsing.

We take long, deep tokes, trying 

to pull Gaian ancestors back to 

abandoned woods, hoping to convince

them that this failure wasn’t 

our fault.

I wonder aloud where we’ll go when 

the Earth dies, crying like I sometimes

do when I realize all at once that

  we’re losing.

You say you’ll build me a home 

under the sea with a special room 

for the last surviving bees, but then

we remember the halibut ghosts 

haunting the North Atlantic –

the acid bleaching the coral blind.

You say you’ll bring me to

the Sea of Tranquility instead.

We’ll build a glass apiary and live 

with the bees in the basalt valley 

between the Lunar North peaks. 

We’ll harvest oxygen from the soil 

and make love to the sounds of hopeful

buzzing as the Earth rises by rote,

a long abandoned hive.

AUTHOR BIO

Michelle Lynch is an educator, writer, and photographer in the metro NYC area. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Lesley University and has had her poetry published in kerning l a space for words, NonBinary Review, Iron Horse Literary Review, Memoryhouse Magazine, San Pedro River Review, Quarterly Journal, Heron Tree Review, Lunch Ticket, among other lovely places.

JUDGE'S REMARKS

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​Poetry Judge

Allison Field Bell

Allison Field Bell is a multi-genre writer originally from northern California, but currently living in Utah.

MORE ABOUT ALLISON

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