Royals Primary has the second grade corralled into the gym.
"What you want to do," I tell the kids, "is draw a mask that looks a lot like your face. As close as you can get it, except we're going
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Stephen Hundley's poem, "There's a body in the blueberries," is in Short Circuit #04, Short Édition's quarterly review. Stephen is the author of The Aliens Will Come to Georgia First (University of North Georgia Press, 2022).
There's a body in the blueberries.
Inside the hedge
from where the bees emerge
and emerge.
So many bees. So many
I can feel them buzzing
beneath my skin.
They tunnel the tubes
of my earways. They walk
the globes of my eyes.
In through the nose, out
through the mouth, leaving traces,
other bodies they have known,
hair washed with motel shampoo,
the wishes that come before sleep,
snatches of names, leafy muffles.
Each bee plants its message
soon to ripen, swell summer velvet:
it goes white to green to blue.