Matt Dennison

Father Wasp

My gladlings, you spinning blades to be,
close brood of a hot front porch: There is
no you, no I, only Nest and Queen; for it is
Nest-Making by Nest for Nest, Queen-Making
by Queen for Queen. We are but wasps, sleek
machines of sexless Fate. Though infinitely
invested by Survival’s right indulgence,
use your stings wisely, for only one Fertile
among us endures—And here I tap upon
your heads so thinly egged together:
Be food for no one but feast on many.
Acknowledge neither fly nor moth
in passing—they are beasts, inelegant,
lacking our furious halos; fit only for bellies
and scat. Ignore as well the squirreled rumors
of cold to come, the exchanged supremacy
of Sun and Moon, for Sun is the metal of
Excellence, beaten, my revving engines,
upon and by the blistering wings of Strike,
Moon but its dull sister. Know this too:
house lizards lick the mud dauber’s nursery
seeking pupae of the absent. We are present.
Know this in gratitude from your hot-paper
tomes of unwritten youth, your first sting.
Fall openly upon your prey, their arms breaking
backwards. Make a bit of wind about them, snake
vessels exploding in chests, for it is in Murder
we delight, be it of Moth or Moon or comely Sap.

*

Our hum upon Nest is ours alone, quickened by
Sun’s needleization of Grace, that scurry-cat
stalking the madness of summer only to pause
at the edge before pouncing—I tap thus on Nest
to inform Eternity. Thoughtless in our replete,
the small-breasted tree with her singing frogs
is of no use to us, only the friable wood of those
who hate. Wish and hope Death on those who,
as snakes whose venom wounds their mouths
must strike, would crush, would poison us.
Though we come in Glory, they think we draw
close to make a hell’s-ditch of the window box,
the desiccated scarecrow, our nimble-quick
descent into violence worse than their Clock’s
man-whip of Slavery. Ask them, those proud
Snails of Not with their fat lips dripping rust
of gatherous mud upon their young: Can you,
as the wild goose barks across the sky, embrace
Helios? Can you, as we, sail a ship through your
face in the middle of the night? Remember—
though we do not remember—They know not
of Nest and Queen, the Eternals among them,
now Single Architect sitting on the gold-fired lip
of Sun encased in gold, suckling and throbbing
and drowning in gold until gold is gold no more,
is Nest-Queen of Stung Delight.