Elena Kebeck-

Hovering by my greasy chips

Creature with a soft middle

Quite near and above his bulging eyes

Light, imaginably soft fuzz stretches

Down his thorax like a ball of lint.

His black physique trickles with yellow.

This happy color and harmless body

Is a costume to the stinger beneath

 

My right ear buzzed

With a finishing izz in my left

Alerts go off and I’m standing

With a thin book in my hand

To shield off the monster.

Like dominos, the girls to my right flap and squawk

The flight response migrates across campus

Freeze, lean back

Bolt.

 

Once my brother was a victim

I watched the fidgety thing

As the abdomen curled under itself

The lance pierced his young arm

Through screams I watched the vibrating thing

Fall on himself in rotations

Around and around with wings and legs

The hornet flailed

Drunkenly unscrewing a cork