Come-Hither Honeycomb

Erin Belieu

In Come-Hither Honeycomb, Erin Belieu turns her signature wit and intellectual rigor inward for an unguarded exploration of human vulnerability. The poems meditate on the impact of large and small traumas: the lasting thumbprint of abuse, the collective specter of disease, the achingly sweet humility of parenting. The bodies in these poems are trapped, held hostage, bleeding. And yet there is agency—structural dynamism, texture, the color green—while a woman climbs a metal ladder to the diving board, a girl climbs high into the branches. The speaker grapples with a lifelong pattern of brutality, then painfully breaks free.

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ISBN: 9781556596100

Format: Paperback

As for the Heart

I am come to the age
of pondering my lastness:

buying what seems likely
my final winter coat at Macy’s,
or when a glossy magazine
(so very blithely)
asks me to renew. As for

my heart, that ever-pixilated
tweener, how tediously long
I’ve been expected to baby
her complaint
(unLOVED unLOVED),

alarmed and stubborn clock—
refusing to listen even as
the more intrepid tried.

Now she mostly mutters
to herself, though
occasionally there’s
some clanging, a tinny sound,

like the radiator in a Southie
triple decker, fractious as
a pair of cowboy boots
in a laundromat’s dryer.

It’s always been
this joke the old ones know—
in such a state
of nearly doneness,

the world grows sweeter,
as if our later days
were underscored with music
from a nocturne’s saddest
oboe hidden in the trees.

Just yesterday,
while standing in the kitchen,
my son complained nonstop
about his AP psych class
while wolfing warmed up
bucatini from a crazed,
pink china bowl.

Shiny, kvetching creature.
Even if I could tell him
what he doesn’t want to know,
I wouldn’t. But now

the pissy storm that’s spent
all afternoon flapping like
a dirty sheet
has wandered off
to spook some other
neighborhood.

There’s one barbed weed
pushing up greenly through
my scruffy loropetalum.

And it falls on me, this little
cold rain the day has left.

About the Author

Erin Belieu was born in Nebraska and educated at The Ohio State University and Boston University. She is the author of Infanta, chosen by Hayden Carruth for the National Poetry Series; One Above & One Below, winner of the Midland Authors Prize and Ohioana Poetry Award; Black Box, a Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalist; Slant Six, a New York Times favorite book of 2014; and Come-Hither Honeycomb (2020), all published by Copper Canyon Press. Her poems have appeared in places such …

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Reviews

“These poems continuously examine life, sometimes with reverence, sometimes with wry humor, as the poet offers an intelligent take on being a woman in the 21st century. The poet’s en point observations of the world are truly delightful, and not since Ann Sexton has a poet captured girlhood so well…”—Library Journal, starred review

“[Belieu’s] latest collection toggles between lighthearted comedy and deep-seated loss, using paradox as a prerequisite for beauty… For every joke in Come-Hither Honeycomb, there’s something tragic on the other side of the scale.”—The New Yorker

“Belieu’s collection is filled with moments… where the poems play with language and references, all with close attention to craft and formal elements. It’s an elegant book.” —The Rumpus

“The speaker of these poems is both predator and prey. Captor and hostage. Debtor and creditor. Logical ironies, sarcasm, playful musings, while difficult sometimes to track, permeate Belieu’s new collection and ultimately elucidate the difficulty of self-interrogation and reflection. No answer is never either black or white. No process of healing is ever a straight line.”—On the Seawall

“Come-Hither Honeycomb is Belieu’s fifth collection and her most reflective and meditative… There are many lives that you could lead, but there’s only the one that you live. With both wit and grace, Belieu has mastered the art of stumbling toward that reality.”—The Adroit Journal

As featured in:

The Rumpus, “What to Read When 2021 Is Just Around the Corner”

The Rumpus, “What to Read When You Want to Celebrate Poetry”