The Wasp at Midnight Whispers by Matt Dennison

Wasp Guarding Nest by Mark Chinnick from Flickr

First published in The Collidescope, September 8, 2019

My gladlings, you spinning blades to be, close brood

of a hot front porch: There is no you, no I, only Nest

and Queen; for it is Nest-making by Nest for Nest,

Queen-making by Queen for Queen. We are but wasps,

sleek machines of sexless Fate. Though infinitely invested

by Survival’s right indulgence, use your stings wisely,

for only one fertile among us endures—And here I tap

upon your leathered heads so thinly egged together:

Be food for no one but feast on many. Acknowledge

neither fly nor moth in passing—they are beasts, inelegant,

lacking our furious halos; fit only for bellies and scat.

Ignore as well the squirreled rumors of cold to come,

the exchanged supremacy of Sun and Moon, for Sun

is the metal of excellence, beaten, my revving engines,

upon and by the blistering wings of Strike, Moon

its dull sister. Know this too: house lizards lick

the mud dauber’s nursery seeking pupae of the absent.

Know this in gratitude from your unwritten tomes

of hot-papered youth: We are present. Though wasps

are never thought to piss or dream, I piss and dream

on you. Accept. Think only of your next sting,

your next little necessary. Fall openly upon your prey,

their arms breaking backwards. Make a bit of wind

about them, snake vessels exploding in chests,

for it is in murder we delight, be it of Moth or Moon

or comely Sap. Our hum upon Nest is ours alone,

quickened by Sun’s needleization of Grace, that scurry-cat

stalking the madness of summer only to pause at the edge

before pouncing—I tap thus on Nest to inform Eternity.

Thoughtless in our replete, the small-breasted tree

with her singing frogs is of no use to us, only the friable

wood of those who hate. Wish and hope death on those who,

as snakes whose venom wounds their mouths must strike,

would crush, would poison us. Though we come in glory,

they think we come into this world to make a hell’s-ditch

of the window box, the desiccated scarecrow, our nimble-

quick descent into violence worse than their clock’s

man-whip of reverie. Ask them, those proud snails of Not

with their fat lips dripping rust and the gathered mud

upon their young: Can you, as the wild goose barks

across the sky, embrace Helios? Can you, as we,

sail a ship through your face in the middle of the night?

Remember, though we do not remember: They know not

of Nest, the eternal among them, the one true architect

on the gold-fired lip of Sun sitting in gold encased in gold

suckling and throbbing and drowning in gold until gold

is gold no more, is Nest Queen of stung delight.

***

Matt Dennison lives in Mississippi and is the author of Kind Surgery, from Urtica Press (Fr.), and Waiting for Better, from Main Street Rag Press.