apitherapy
perennial chairwoman of the board
of emotional labor I stuffed the bees
into a slim clutch I needed them mostly
between appointments their intimate creep
strangers harvested for stingers for woe
was me & all women like me technicolorfully drunk
at the holiday party desiccatedly chic at the grocery
& at all times jilted at all times tumescent with misled magnanimity
& at the end of each treacherous day I seized
the tub by the edges fuzzed corpses limp in my lap
I waited for the water to lick my knees to anoint me the ossified
saint of vacant privilege to drown me in the honeyed heart-wrenching goddamned
glistening thrum
of stolen power
Slow down, babe! an unhelpful
stranger shouts as I run for the 4,
bat out of hell like a disheveled
SEPTA Cinderella. For what I want,
I can’t wait. I pass cosplayers
and brides on South Broad, their eyes
as wide as the Wendy’s window
mannequin’s. A little urban absurdity
never hurt anyone, I guess. Good
morning, I say. Hey sexy, I get. Standing in
the freezer aisle of the post-prison Acme,
on another creaky South Philly roof
in a city that delivers on its sunsets,
I lean against a monumental absence.
My cutesy Tinder knockoff app
matches me with a sweet guy who runs
a bakery in Fishtown—I can dig it but
I’m East Passyunk and trying to lose weight.
For what I want, I can’t wait. Standing in
a long line at the Walnut Street Wawa
lit up like Times Square, laughing about
my first night in the so-called sixth borough
and the worst goddamn pizza I ever ate.
Sometimes it’s Philly vs. the world.
Sometimes we eat the world for lunch.
But you love it, don’t you? Mike says,
still waiting on me to return to NYC.
You’re so South Philly! someone crows
as I sweep my stoop. Fussy Cinderella
of South Camac, citywide inferiority
complex strapped to my back.
The CVS has an optical section now
so the times are-a-changin’.
My block’s all cats and dogs and
weed fog and rising property values.
Equal walking distance to the wine bar
with the quirky marquee and the vintage
furrier where nazi scumbags paused
to practice their scrawl. Standing in
the shadows of toy soldier condos in a city
content to leave so much unsaid,
zip codes riddled with departed space,
all poem and no face. Where I’ll fit in
just fine if I slow down and wait.
Nicole Steinberg
Nicole Steinberg is the author of Glass Actress (Furniture Press Books, 2017), Getting Lucky (Spooky Girlfriend Press, 2013), and several chapbooks, including Fat Dreams (Barrelhouse, 2018). Her work has been featured or reviewed in the New York Times, Newsweek, Flavorwire, Bitch, and Hyperallergic, and her poetry was selected by Penn State’s Pennsylvania Center for the Book for the 2016 Public Poetry Project poster series. She’s the founder of New York’s EARSHOT reading series and she lives in Philadelphia. Learn more at nicolesteinberg.net.