Kevin McLellan
Concerning Honey
The beekeeper on the roof of the opera house
in Paris said, There aren’t farmers anymore…
only agricultural companies and they use pesticides.
I turned off the TV, took Atripla
with plenty of water, and went to bed.
*
Returning from the bathroom
in the middle of the night
my half-closed eyes caught sight
of black spots swirling like enlarged
microscopic cells on the bedroom door.
*
It’s been 6 years. I wonder what %
of us abstain from sex. After watching Franco
play Ginsberg, I realize I’ve not been frank.
It’s because of you reader
why I haven’t asked, do you wanna fuck?
*
Sometimes my ability to reason isn’t reliable.
Sometimes I make lists.
Sometimes obsessive-compulsive.
Sometimes I eat too much.
I decide to join a gym and closely monitor my diet.
*
The fig martini was gorgeous!
But I’m always concerned with how
the sugars will mix with the medicine,
so I stay up much later than planned.
I decide to watch a movie.
*
Swinton with Jarmen. Cruz with Almodóvar
and after Scientologist cock. Kidman
after Scientologist cock. Swinton after Jarmen.
Oh, and Kristin Scott Thomas in French!
Elizabeth Taylor passed away today.
*
If a naked woman was showering here
don’t you think these jocks would watch?
The gym has group showers, and I can’t help
but look at their cocks and the stream of water
that runs down and off them to the tiled floor.
*
Soon after she miscarried. For so long,
I didn’t know my mother had.
My best friend miscarried
as did another friend.
I can’t know what it must be like.
*
A side effect can be diarrhea.
Another is abnormal and lucid dreaming.
Last night I visited the National Lost Letter Facility
and Café to pick up a twined bundle,
but I didn’t recognize any of the sender names.
*
The young monk at the Central Square
Post Office didn’t occupy very much space.
He hadn’t sealed his box,
and the teller sent him on his way
to purchase some packing tape.
*
…1000’s of miles away. The panicked here
bought up all iodine tablets and survival kits.
Did you? Please donate to the Red Cross…
I’m reminded day after day
that there are other kinds of ruin.
*
Were they safe to eat? Still sweet tasting?
I heard that a guy who cleaned the filters
at Seabrook Station was supposed to toss
the lobsters back in the ocean,
but he was caught for selling them on the side.
*
I find myself relating to “Ebben? Ne Andrò
Lontana” when Callas sings I shall go far away,
and when I play this recording, my canaries
stop eating and situate themselves like an audience.
I move closer in my cage too.
*
My diet mainly consists of:
red grapes, tomatoes, peppers
radishes, spinach, kale,
oatmeal, walnuts, and brown rice.
Oh, and clouds of gold.
Kevin McLellan is the author of Tributary (Barrow Street, 2015) and the chapbook Round Trip (Seven Kitchens, 201), a collaborative serious with numerous women poets. The chapbook Shoes on a wire (Split Oak) and the book arts project [box] (Small Po[r]tions) are both forthcoming. He is the winner of the 2015 Third Coast Poetry Prize and has recent or forthcoming poems in journals including: American Letters & Commentary, Colorado Review, Crazyhorse, Interim, Kenyon Review, West Branch, Western Humanities Review, Witness, and numerous others. Kevin lives in Cambridge MA.
This poem appears in The Body Electric (Ars Omnia Press, 2013), edited by Aimee Herman.