Honey Conductor
by Rasha Abdulhadi
Issue 12: Sound
Untitled, © peter_waters/Adobe Stock
o my snowy valentines scatter in drifts across Chicago, eight inches thick.
this winter heart—full hive nested with stings and
huddled for warmth, wings beating for heat but going nowhere—
wants to clean out the house and forage for sweetness.
this time is not like others. I forget the time until I sing them
letters full of bees. Fingers slide open envelopes and loose
a storm of tiny mobile transmissions.
Antennae, lightning rod, medium at a seance, symphony conductor
of a train whose switches I can’t find, barreling on magnetic tracks
pulled on and back and sideways by three destinations:
the home I made, that honors me and leaves me in poverty
the home I long for and left, that will not receive kindly my return
the world I still barely know, whose bees invade this hive with storysong,
whose adventures call, holding out arms made of smoke
to drive me from my winter shelter.
Rasha Abdulhadi
Rasha Abdulhadi is a queer Palestinian Southerner who cut their teeth organizing on the south sides of Chicago and Atlanta. Their work is anthologized in Unfettered Hexes, Halal if You Hear Me, Stoked Words, and Luminescent Threads: Connections to Octavia E. Butler. A fiber artist, poet, and speculative fiction writer and editor, Rasha is a member of the Radius of Arab American Writers, Justice for Muslims Collective, and Alternate ROOTS. Their chapbook who is owed springtime is available from Neon Hemlock press.
