8/18/2020 POETRY: MADELINE BASSNETTCOLONY COLLAPSE Survivors crawl across withered black comb, invisible apocalypse, sisters wandering lost in the corn fields, seduced by filaments of silk, the toxic pollen. Scooping up death-- no distinction between friend and foe, all obliterated in service of unblemished fields, poisoned bees littering the ground. The low hum of welcome washed into air, torn apart by a breeze. Sent down streams like the limbs of Orpheus; the queen perched on her throne, wondering who will come to feed her. Regal head tilting patiently, big eyes surveying the decay. Where is her long train, her cloak of swarming bodies, tight as tapestry? Gone, all gone. Her own body meaningless without them. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS “Colony Collapse” has been published in a previous version in Hamilton Arts and Letters and in Under the Gamma Camera (Gaspereau, 2019). Madeline Bassnett is the author of the poetry collection Under the Gamma Camera (Gaspereau 2019), and two chapbooks, Pilgrimage and Elegies. Her poems have appeared in journals including long con magazine, Prairie Fire, Hamilton Arts and Letters, The New Quarterly, and in the anthology, In Fine Form, 2nd Edition: A Contemporary Look at Canadian Form Poetry. She is currently on the board of Poetry London and teaches in the Department of English and Writing Studies at Western University. She lives in London, Ontario.
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