Bee Hive

Sometimes I sit,
face the hive to feel bees
bounce off my back, bumble past, buzz
away.

We carry hats lined with mesh-netting-protection,
the thick smell of burning burlap
and a skinny paint-scraper.

I crouch among the shrubs and clumps
of poisonous pokeweed,
balancing barefoot
on a rock wrapped with vines.

Hats on our heads, we tuck the mesh back, up
like a veil the groom has brushed aside,
render them useless, now
undivided from the swarm by scant screen.

I lean, balance recklessly forward, puff
the smoker so I cough in gray plumes,
while my dad slips the scraper between
chambers one and two.

He separates each comb,
moves the outer to the middle.
We inspect, where they’re
capped
in gold, baby bees grow,
hidden behind a film of white.
Workers chug the cells of viscous liquid.

He moves the chambers,
puts top and middle back together, and I wince
when a body’s crushed between the wood.
Its leg twitches, then stills.

Then: “Run,” and I
run, cough, stumble
in a hole for a
post that doesn’t exist for a
fence that doesn’t keep the deer out.

After the first sting, the troops converge.
My dad rebuilds the beehouse while its occupants
attack,
the skin of his wrist explodes
around his watch.

When we rejoin,
he flicks the stinger from my knuckle,
picks the eight off of his arms,
and we sit on the porch, wrapped in ice.

And I know,
in misguided confidence,
we will forgo our hats tomorrow, too.

The Snail

From beneath the sunset-colored cusp of calcium
appears a thin stalk, a piece of yellowed grass
that’s been rubbed between two anxious fingers
until translucent. It retreats to beckon for its twin,
then emerges again, accompanied
now. The amber almond wobbles, rises, begins to leave
a silver trail across the palm beneath it.
Like fish darting into darker waters
at the sight of a boat above, the eye
at the tip of the stalk sinks into obsolescence. Emerging again,
one eye higher than the other like quirked eyebrows,
he tastes the air with his lower antennae, the shadow of his mouth
gnawing at nothing. He’s left a larger pool
of slime at the top of one thumb, where two trips converged.
There’s a silver circle where he danced a solo.
He’s settled where two lands meet,
skin of thumb bridging skin of hand.
A tree wears its years within, but he wears
his lines on his back, taunting death
with the time he’s spent escaping it, hiding
on the undersides of leaves at a crow’s caw, and
munching on milkweed, immune to its poison.
One eye disappears like a groundhog scared
of its shadow, then the other.
Beneath his semi-transparent armor,
his flesh pulses as he presses himself seamlessly to its sides.
And animate wet clay becomes a bug
trapped in amber casing, becomes a pebble
inert among the rocks.

---

Adelaide Gifford is a senior at Hamilton College in New York, majoring in Creative Writing and double-minoring in Hispanic Studies and Environmental Studies. Her favorite genre to write is a mixture of nature writing and fantasy, with a bit of magical realism thrown in, and her favorite authors include Richard Powers, Harper Lee, Billy Collins, and Brandon Mull. She has previously published a short story, “Bullfight,” in the 2023-2024 issue of Sucarnochee Review, and has had poetry published in undergraduate magazines such as Glass Mountain, Green Blotter, and Applause. She also has several poems awaiting publication. When she’s not writing, she loves gardening, going for walks with her dog, and listening to the Beatles.