Philly Poetry Chapbook Review is pleased to feature Stefanie Kirby’s poem “Like a Honeypot” as our second featured chapbook poem of Issue 3: May/June 2024. You can find more of her poetry in her chapbook, Fruitful, available beginning June 25 from Driftwood Press.
Like a Honeypot
I’m covered with summer
bees. Their bodies shift
like a coat or runoff or
an open door. They’ve seen
my womb blinking like
a star in my abdomen.
A womb starts and ends
empty, a hollow in the shape
of a hive. Impossible,
the bees say, to clear
the honey from the blood.
Each season after, my body
empties in flood: something
sticky, something sweet.
(This poem was first published by Tab Journal.)
About the Poem
This poem arose from the impulse to write about fear, and there’s not much I fear more than stinging insects. What could be worse, then, than to be covered in a swarm? In the end, the poem surprised me by making the bees more benevolent than I’d expected — by drawing on the uterus as an unexpected stand-in for a hive, the poem turned itself away from fear toward a strange sort of symbiosis. Many thanks to Tab Journal, where this poem first found a home.
Stefanie Kirby
Author Bio
Stefanie Kirby lives and writes along Colorado’s Front Range. Her debut chapbook, Fruitful, is the winner of the 2023 Adrift Chapbook Contest, forthcoming from Driftwood Press. Her poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best New Poets, and Best of the Net, and appear in The Massachusetts Review, The Maine Review, The Cincinnati Review, Cola Literary Review, SAND, Poet Lore, and elsewhere.
From Fruitful
“Stefanie Kirby’s Fruitful is a remarkable lyric sequence about raising children during a pregnancy and subsequent miscarriage. If Chekhov advised that fraught subject matter be written ‘somewhat colder,’ then these expertly-crafted poems must have been written at absolute zero in Kelvin. The effect is a kind of creeping dread that increases with every line we read. A singular imagination, Kirby creates a new world, a world of intimate pain where ‘a wolf made of bees, the fur a soft buzz,’ follows the speaker whose ‘milk rings itself like an ocean” and whose ‘womb stacks / itself into cold, / neat cubes on / the linoleum.’ This poetry just contains the unbearable—though contain it must—for ‘to go under again would be to drown.’” -Carolyn Hembree, author of For Today
Contents
Check out new poetry books published the week of 5/7 from Stanchion Books, Black Ocean, Andrews McMeel Publishing, Picador UK, Mercer University Press, Wave Books, Alice James Books, Graywolf Press, Copper Canyon Press, BOA Editions Ltd, Black Lawrence Press, Grayson Books, Bloodaxe Books and CavanKerry Press.
Chapbook Poem: Disguise by Christine Kitano
Read the featured Chapbook Poem of the Month for May 2024, “Disguise” from Dumb Luck & other poems by Christine Kitano, along with a few words from the poet.
Check out new poetry books published the week of 5/14 from Finishing Line Press, Black Ocean, University of Queensland Press, She Writes Press, White Pine Press, Curbstone Books, New Directions, W. W. Norton & Company, Omnidawn, NYRB Poets, Anvil Press and an editor’s pick from Copper Canyon Press.
Check out new poetry books published the week of 5/21 from Seren, Finishing Line Press, Diode Editions, Copper Canyon Press, Nightboat Books, Milkweed Editions, CavanKerry Press, Invisible Publishing, Holy Cow! Press, Wake Forest University Press, Zephyr Press, Querencia Press, YesYes Books, Coach House Books and Rose Books.
Check out new poetry books published the week of 5/28 from Tupelo Press, Diode Editions, McSweeney’s Publishing, Michigan State University Press, Caitlin Press Inc., Carcanet Press Ltd., White Pine Press, Deep Vellum Publishing, Hat & Beard Press, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Copper Canyon Press, Sagging Meniscus, The Song Cave, Finishing Line Press and Broken Sleep Books.
Check out new poetry books for the week of 6/4 from Bored Wolves, Scribner, Coach House Books, House of Anansi Press, Biblioasis, Button Poetry, Seagull Books, Jackleg Press, Green Linden Press and Central Avenue Publishing.
Chapbook Poem: Like a Honeypot by Stefanie Kirby
Read the featured Chapbook Poem of the Month for June 2024, “Like a Honeypot” from Fruitful by Stefanie Kirby, along with a few words from the poet.
Check out new poetry chapbooks from Cathexis Northwest Press, Diode Editions, Gnashing Teeth Publishing, Seren Books, Grayson Books, Querencia Press, Ugly Duckling Presse, The Poetry Box and Finishing Line Press.
Check out new poetry books published the week of 6/11 from The Poetry Box, Finishing Line Press, YesYes Books, Burnside Review Press, Row House Publishing, Deep Vellum Publishing, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Phoneme Media, Sheila-Na-Gig Editions, Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, Lynx House Press, Alice James Books and Inhabit Media.
May/June ‘24 Editor’s Note: Aldon Lynn Nielsen
While PCR contributors C.M. Crockford, Drishya, and myself work on reviews for our fourth issue and beyond, our May/June issue only has one editorial feature– the first in what I hope to be a series of long interviews with veteran poets.
A Conversation with Aldon Lynn Nielsen
Poet-scholar Aldon Lynn Nielsen shares about his work, his recent chapbook, and poetry in general in this collaborative interview piece with editor Aiden Hunt.
Check out new poetry books published the week of 6/18 from Finishing Line Press, YesYes Books, Belle Point Press and Red Hen Press.
Check out new poetry books published the week of 6/25 from Finishing Line Press, Nightboat Books, Coach House Books, Pavilion Poetry, LSU Press, Trio House Press, Leapfrog Press, White Pine Press, Carcanet Press Ltd., Dial Press, Milkweed Editions, and Farrar, Straus and Giroux.