I Saw a Dead Bee on the Floor
by Gabriella Garofalo

  1. I saw a dead bee on the floor,
  2. The ambivalent sky mocking her snuffed-out wings
  3. In a sunset syndrome -
  4. Spiders much faster,
  5. Unless you sweep the cobwebs off the walls
  6. They can live on -
  7. Not a leaf, not a whisper,
  8. Not even the first white page of a book,
  9. A bee, it was a bee, the very first moment
  10. I saw it I knew:
  11. I’d be sold down the river -
  12. I know, they taught me there’s blood in my veins,
  13. Blood in yours, but what blood?
  14. Afraid I’ve got only a virus, a shadow and a tree
  15. Ever since those two stares
  16. Let the oceans overflow,
  17. Ever since love thrust me out
  18. To a blotchy room, maybe the souls
  19. Who believe in love and oceans
  20. Balled it up, maybe those who scream
  21. It’s only sex and puddles -
  22. Long story short, you’re still there,
  23. My dead bee, my memento on the floor
  24. While the sky blinds himself in a fit of rage,
  25. While I make my mind a jade -
  26. Yes, I’d ache to be like a Theban king, sadly I’m not -
  27. Because that’s the blood running in my veins.
Packingtown Review – Vol.8, Winter 2016/2017

Born in Italy some decades ago, Gabriella Garofalo fell in love with the English language at six, the same age she started writing poems (in Italian). She is the author of Lo sguardo di Orfeo, L’inverno di vetro, Di altre stelle polari, and Blue Branches.

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