Margarita Delcheva

For the Bees to Come

We must kiss the Earth for days,
not even feeling bold enough to say
we are sorry. There must be a coughing child
on every hill, his hands wrapped
in something invaluable.
He should wave, convinced he is seen
from afar. An adult must be
next to each child, convincing.

The pregnant women should throw out
all lists of names they had, assign
their children musical notes –
call them for dinner with whistles
and violins. The children will never
answer to different names.

Most of all we need to
hang our houses from trees.
Make somebody else’s life sweet –
why do bees make honey anyway?
We must put chiffon on the necks
of tigers, fake flowers in lakes.
What more could they want?
Even teach animals to sign checks,
put banks in the forest.

After an Argument

I in and out my bike
in the stitch of lane marking,
punctuation for motion, unlike
your language where every sixth word
has birds in it. From here I can see
First Avenue for twenty-three blocks.

I hit the brakes, hoping to erase
some lines with my tires. You and I set
our opinions like flowerpots
on top of a calm sea. No escape
from the ourness of the immediate future.

Someone said we are reborn
a hundred times every second.
We get recycled into ourselves.

How to make what is already
in our mouths more delicious?

The grass crawls onto the backs of ladybugs,
as if it will get somewhere other
than guts but once
you grew irises from rice seeds.
You really did.

Margarita Delcheva is a graduate of the NYU Creative Writing Program. Her poems have been published in CutThroat, Chronogram, Ep;phany, the Meadow and others. She is Associate Faculty at the University of Phoenix and currently resides in New York. Margarita’s first book of poems is coming out this Spring in Sofia, Bulgaria.