“Bugonia” by Zachary Lundgren

Virgil believed bees were born from dead cattle,
spawning out of bloody rust and bones
grown hard under sun.

I don’t know much about bees,
but I believed I’d see you
in the withered air of August, standing there at the mouth
of my sister’s gravel road.

Our sciences, they –

these stories we tell and believe, we share as ravenously
as vultures tearing constellations
into flesh, a white carcass, one honest manuscript.

Does it matter if this is true
if it feeds you
all the same?

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Zachary Lundgren received his MFA in poetry from the University of South Florida and his BA in English from the University of Colorado at Boulder and grew up in northern Virginia. He has had poetry published in several literary journals and magazines including The Louisville Review, The Portland Review, Barnstorm Journal, The Adirondack Review, and the University of Colorado Honors Journal.