I felt like experimenting with Jackson Mac Low’s diastic method today. My source text was “What Is It Like to Be a Bee?,” an article originally published in Atlas Obscura. The phrase I used to read through the text was honeybee. When I reached the end of the article, I went back to the beginning. Had I continued the poem beyond where I ended it, it would have started a repeating cycle beginning with the phrase “hot potato” running through to the end.
Honeybee
Honeybee you’ve…
Don’t…
Exceptionally hairy honeybee
supplies ourselves hot potato.
Wondered same honeybees.
Honeybees disagree,
navigate, have to kind time,
study neurobiology.
Picture honeybee: he do,
can, like hairy honeybee.
Despite honeybee.