Celia Bland is the author of the poetry collection Soft Box, and she produced a collaborative work with the visual artist Dianne Kornberg entitled The Education of the Virgin. Her essay “Secret Book Written in the Dirt” is anthologized in a collection devoted to the poetry of Jean Valentine. Bland has also written numerous works for young adults, including The Conspiracy of the Secret Nine. She is writer in residence at Bard College in New York’s Hudson Valley.

Wasps

by Celia Bland

We cohabitate
with yellow jackets,
mime their dressage
of amber thorax, black-
stockinged
feelers, severe
knobs of head and tail:
one a heavy horn
of venom, the other
masked.

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