Thank you to everyone who joined for this session!

For this session we close read “Equinox” by Elizabeth Alexander, posted below.

Our prompt for this session was: “There is no other way to say…”

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“Equinox” by Elizabeth Alexander

Now is the time of year when bees are wild 
and eccentric. They fly fast and in cramped 
loop-de-loops, dive-bomb clusters of conversants 
in the bright, late-September out-of-doors. 
I have found their dried husks in my clothes. 

They are dervishes because they are dying, 
one last sting, a warm place to squeeze 
a drop of venom or of honey. 
After the stroke we thought would be her last 
my grandmother came back, reared back and slapped 

a nurse across the face. Then she stood up, 
walked outside, and lay down in the snow. 
Two years later there is no other way 
to say, we are waiting. She is silent, light 
as an empty hive, and she is breathing.



From Crave Radiance: New and Selected Poems 1990-2010. 
Copyright © 2010 by Elizabeth Alexander.