POETRY

By TERIN WEINBERG

We dance in the black,
   tight, and tickled corners. My sisters
thirst for a pouch full
of pollen. They follow
   my pirouette to the east
to find sweet
bramble bush hidden in the burrow
   of the shoemaker’s yard.

We build a house
   for queens to kill
their sisters in. Royal jelly
filled cells haunt
the brood. Desire for
   death shows at the door
like crowned jewels. Her abdomen
swollen—
   bearing the stinger
only she will keep. We collect

our dead and drag
them to the mouth. Our
   living men
we no longer feed. We’ve
   spit wax walls
to build a castle, only
breathing in the dark.

Terin Weinberg is a Environmental Studies and English double-major at Salisbury University in Maryland. She has poems published in Barely South Review, The Red Earth Review and a publication forthcoming in Dark River Review. She is also the Editor-In-Chief of The Scarab Magazine.