Nests

Abstract

Nests Renee Emerson (bio) 1 Dad held our dog up high as his arms stretched,by the scruff of her neck, a black-furred maragainst the summer sky. Mother wasn’t home;we saw him and hid in the folded-down pop-up camper,its perfect skirt of weeds anchoring it to the yard.The crawl space, when folded down, was large enoughfor three girls to crawl inside. If you don’t mindthe all-encompassing heat, and the wasps, hovering,uncertain in the darkness, landing and flexing.We closed the door behind us, and we held it closed. 2 Every time I see a wasp, I take it as a warning.I don’t go where a wasp is. I don’t open a doorthat a wasp hovers outside of. My sister was chasedby a wasp, stung seven times in the back as she ranfor the house. I like to think I’ve never been stungbecause I am very careful. 3 I’ve never once been stungthough my two-year-old daughterhas now—on her ankle, cleanas an unpaid bill, a puncturewe coated with baking soda paste,wrapped in cellophane. [End Page 44] Her grandfather, on my husband’s side,a surgeon, tied a bow around the bandage,because she asked him to. Steve was carefulwith the wound, careful in a waythat would have made my father laugh. 4 Wasps built nests in the ventsof my childhood bedroomevery summer. Buzzingin the vents, drifting downthrough the slats. Afterthey were sprayed, I’d findthem in the mornings curlingand uncurling the deep redbodies. Crisp-shelled, dark-winged.Searching to sting, I thoughtat the time, but now see it asa display of pain. [End Page 45] Renee Emerson Renee Emerson is the author of Keeping Me Still. She earned her MFA in poetry from Boston University, where she was also awarded the 2009 Academy of American Poets Prize. She is also the author of three chapbooks of poetry: Where Nothing Can Grow, The Whitest Sheets, and Something Like Flight. Emerson teaches at Shorter University and lives in Northern Georgia with her husband and daughters. Copyright © 2015 Berea College