There, in someone’s front yard
I saw a glass bowl, turned over
on a hole, with a red-brown
brick on top. In that airless
chamber, a small swarm of desperate
wasps swirled. I did nothing to end
this small cruelty. I went on walking,
not knowing what my business was.

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WLS (Wendy Lee Spacek) earned her MFA in Creative Writing from Indiana University Bloomington. Her first book, Psychogynecology, was published by Monster House Press in 2015. Her work can be found at poets.org, deLuge Journal, and Up the Staircase Quarterly. She has received two Vera Meyer Strube Academy of American Poets Awards and the Katharine Bakeless Nason Scholarship to the Bread Loaf Environmental Writers’ Conference. She can be found on Instagram @wls______.

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This poem also appeared in Portland Review‘s 2019 Unchartable anthology. Click here to read more.