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A month or so ago, two different friends at two different times in two different places told me that the poet Erin Belieu was reading at KGB, and because I did not know her well, I should go give her a listen.

The night of the reading, KGB was packed with the poet’s fans, friends and former students. I enjoyed the reading, and shortly after got ahold of her most recent book, come-hither honeycomb to have a look.

I’ve typed out three poems from come-hither honeycomb to get closer to the words that I find carefully and playfully written, approachable comfortable words that are full of humor that take you by surprise when what seems so funny at first is not so funny at all.

There is one poem called “Failure” that has to do with anole lizards that are seen hurrying along the walls, and paths, and bushes in many states down South. They enter a home for escape, but then get trapped. I had this experience in a hotel room in Boca Raton when I brought in some laundry I had left drying outside on a bush, and a lizard scurried away out of the clothes to hide itself in the curtains.

I searched for it, and would have set it free outside, but it continued to hide. I begged the thing, “Please let me find you.” The room was well-sealed with no escape. Why had it hidden in my t-shirt? Why this fate? Why this appointment in Samarra that we ourselves make? I looked in vain among the curtains and behind things, a small thing creating a dreadful sorrow in me, inescapable omen, hoping to rescue, caught in the curtains, a guilty complicit kismet, the human and the lizard, the lizard and the human. Here is the poem. I’ve decided to type it out.

Your Failure

was mostly predictable
……………………..and daily,

like the wee, fluorescent lizards
……………………..still creeping greenly
………………………………….along the front doorframe,

Who think the house the image of
……………………..escape, despite how clear the world
………………………………….is just behind them.

Who, wasting, never know
……………………..we never mean to trap them.
………………………………….We try to help.

But God, it’s tough to take,
……………………..this animal made complete
…………………………………from dumb instinct

the urge that drives them
……………………..steadily amiss,
………………………………….constant, and unfair;

it hurts to watch them
……………………..scramble, dewlaps throbbing,
………………………………….the Swiss precision of their fear.

Now sorting out the wreck,
……………………..she digs her broom into another
………………………………….hidden, grubby crack,

to find the husk
……………………..these creatures leave us
………………………………….because of what they lack.

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Although the reading at KGB was packed, I made sure to get there early and got the table in front. In the video below, Erin Belieu reads one poem from come-hither honeycomb and then several recent unpublished ones. Enjoy.

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Here are the three poems from come-hither honeycomb that I typed out originally.

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Instructions for the Hostage

You must accept the door is never shut.
You’re always free to leave at any time,
though the hostage will remain, no matter what.

The damage could be managed, so you thought.
Essential to the theory of your crime:
you must accept the door is never shut.

Soon, you’ll need to choose which parts to cut
for proof of life, then settle on your spine—
though the hostage will remain, no matter what.

Buried with a straw, it’s the weak who start
Considering their price. You’re no great sum.
You must accept the door is never shut

and make a half-life there, aware, apart,
afraid your captor’s lost you, so far down,
though the hostage will remain, no matter what.

Blink once for yes, and twice for yes—the heart
Makes a signal for the willing, its purity sublime.
You must accept the door is never shut,
though the hostage will remain, no matter what.

 

Loser Bait

Some of us
are chum.

Some of us
are the come-hither
honeycomb

gleamy in the middle
of the trap’s busted smile.

Though I let myself a little
off this hook, petard
by which I flail,

and fancy myself more
flattered—
no ugly worm!

Humor me
as hapless nymph,
straight outta Bulfinch’s, minding
my own beeswax,

gamboling, or picking flowers
(say daffodils),
doing that unspecified stuff
nymphs do
with their hours,

until spied by a layabout youth,
or a rapey god
who leaps unerring, stag-like,
quicker than smoke, to the wrong idea.

Or maybe
the right?

For didn’t I supply
the tippy box, too?
Notch the stick on which
to prop it?

Didn’t I fumble the clove hitch
for the rope?
Leave the trip lying obvious
in the tall, buggy grass?

Ever it was.
Duh.

Be that mat,
and the left foot finds you welcome.

Though there’s always a subject, a him-
or herself. But to name it
calls it down, like Satan
or the IRS.

It must be swell,
to have both deed and
the entitlement, for leaners who hold our lien,

consumers who consume like
red tide ripping through a coastal lake.

Who fed themselves so very well
when gazing in that kiddie pool, or any
skinny inch of water.

That guy, remember? How tell this tale
without him? A story
so hoary, his name’s Pre-Greek.

What brought Narcissus down?
A spotty case
of the disdains, I think,

a one-man performance
wherein the actor hates his audience.

 

Dum Spiro Spero

……..Come, Lord, and lift the fallen bird
……..Abandoned on the ground;
……..The soul bereft and longing so
……..To have the lost be found…

Before the movers came,
we found the sparrows’ nest

concealed inside the chive
plant on the patio.

And the bald chicks there
calling, unfledged, undone.

Love, the mean days collecting
scored us, and hourly

such years: we feel too much

assembling what our world
got wrong; black artery

of wires, branched hazard, rat
stinking in the beams. Wrong as

your mattress on the floor,
walls where the only stud

sinks into a metal grief.

Take this distance as you go,
Love, which is my faith, tedious,

steady, like scraping gum
from a shoe. Strong as a cobweb,

I give you this durable string.

Because I remember you:
who saves the sparrows;

the chicks calling and calling
and you who won’t forget them;

have seen the ghost who rents
your eyes dissolve when

your face turns to the light.

Today, I watched the other birds
who lived this winter

peppering our tulip tree. The buds’
tough seams begin to crack.

Ordinary. No sign to read, I know.
But while we breathe, we hope.

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Come-hither honeycomb is published by Copper Canyon Press. You can check it out here:

https://www.coppercanyonpress.org/books/come-hither-honeycomb-by-erin-belieu/

Here is an interview with Erin Belieu about come-hither honeycomb:

https://paulsemel.com/exclusive-interview-come-hither-honeycomb-author-erin-belieu/

And here is a New Yorker review of come-hither honeycomb: 

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/02/08/big-laughs-and-hard-silences-in-erin-belieus-poetry

 

 

Erin Belieu