Doctors found four bees in her eyes eating her tears.
1.
yesterday a black hole
tomorrow a leak
dragged out
by his legs
different news today
a desperate nonsense
deeply felt
2.
my squalor is buzzing
your stick candy is buzzing
my sticky last year is buzzing
your sturdy trunk saw is buzzing
an acorn in the shape of a horseshow is buzzing
3.
no I mean horseshoe
no I mean clover
no I mean rabbit’s foot
one out the door
one in the stew
no I mean stain
no I mean strain
4.
lucky she didn’t rub at her eyes
lucky her vision was impaired and corrected
lucky the doctors dragged them out by their legs
lucky they ate
and they ate up her tears
Reasonable Cost
There are no dollar signs
next to the prices
on my poems
because it makes
their cost seem more
reasonable. I wanted
to be a soldier once.
More than once. I wanted
you to know this. About
the reasonable cost.
Reasonable cost is a phrase
for war, even though
there aren’t any
wars in my poems
per se.
Ben Pelhan is a London-based American. He founded Line Assembly, a poetry education and performance tour with accompanying documentary now in post-production. His poems have appeared/are forthcoming in Black Warrior Review, BOMB Magazine, Fairy Tale Review, and Hobart, among others. You can follow @benpelhan on Instagram to see pictures of his dog and the occasional London elephant sighting.