Andra Emilia Fenton was born in Mexico City. She was a Fiction Fellow at The City University of New York’s Graduate Center and has published essays, poems, and short stories in Ireland, the U.K., and the U.S. Her illustrations have been featured in print and online publications and used in product packaging design. She works internationally as a behavioral scientist.
Bees
Someone must rescue the drowning bees
From the country club pool
Someone must rescue the people
Hidden a few hundred feet from here.
I puncture the water and lift a bee.
It floats in the wet cradle of my hands
Sometimes it lives
Sometimes not.
The hidden people
Are losing their ears
They are taken from them
With the lip of a knife.
He has a house here, The Ear Chopper
And many other houses too
He takes his victims there
Leaves them with heads smooth as eggs
Cradles the ears in cardboard
Sends them to the families
And the ears speak
They say: Pay up.
I swim in the country club pool
Wet wings by my side
The Ear Chopper somewhere near
The people somewhere hidden.
I dive, I rise,
I cup a drowning bee
Lift it to my ear. Nothing.
Then, the buzzing.