Laden Bee
By John M. Anderson


The light a yellow habit, vineyard
monk among wartime perfumed letters bent,
the old purple three cent stamps in their thumb-torn

corners, love-language refolded. What crumbled pages
of yellow pollen does he seek in the seams of their black-
stockinged legs and lees? Decanting to a geode cellar,

full as a swimming eye with honey hoard. Rigid
as any eye at the last, hard wax, persistent;
retinal ghost and post-script.

John M. Anderson teaches at Boston College. He has work just out in Fugue, Rosebud, Argestes, The Carolina Quarterly, The Big Ugly, and South Dakota Review among others; he was nominated by The Aurorean for a 2007 Pushcart Prize. His chapbook Dictionary Quilt (Pudding House, 2007), is about the weird dream landscapes of the American southwest. He is working on a book called “Old Masters, Iraq War Edition.”

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