III
Ted Jean
another instance in which bees
helped to save thirteen humans
that fall
between bankruptcies
they demolished
the broken shed
behind the barn
without permission
of the redneck landlord
and found the hive
seventeen stings all round
warmed it cooled it
stripped its chaste amber wax
got five weeks of honey
for their fifty pound bag
of pancake batter
A carpenter, Ted Jean writes, paints, plays tennis with Amy Lee. Nominated twice for Best of the Net, and twice for the Pushcart Prize, his work appears in Beloit Poetry Journal, PANK, DIAGRAM, Juked, Spillway, dozens of other publications. His first chapbook, Desultory Sonnets, won the 2016 Turtle Island Poetry Award.