HEAT ADVISORY FOR ROME AND SURROUNDING AREAS
There is a beehive rotting somewhere under
the Colosseum. Resident hornets come out
sometimes in the summer, and they are furious
and they are starving. When it is sweltering
hot and the streets are lined with seventeen
different versions of the same cart selling
Coke and lemonade to the tourist whose wallet
was just stolen twenty minutes ago and they haven’t
noticed, the bees crawl into people’s ears
and into their Burberry handbags and every stolen
thing, and they sting and they bite and your skin
is like the inside of a blood orange and it’s just
nature. Some people never go to Rome.
Some people only hear about it from
Travel and Leisure and some people
never go back. Some people visit
the Colosseum and send a postcard
back to their friends: Having an amazing
time, wish you were here.
—from 2022 Rattle Young Poets Anthology
__________
Why do you like to write poetry?
Holly Haeck: “I write poetry to preserve intense thoughts and emotions in a single moment of time. I can arrange the words in a way that makes sense to my mind lyrically and visually on a page, and share it with others in hopes that they will understand, too. Poetry is my own unique way of communicating with others, with myself, and with the world around me.”
