It’s raining and I have to go
buy lilies for my butterfly.
He’ll like the aroma of flowers
on a cold November day
since all the wild blooms have faded.
Octubre lives inside a screened-in cage,
because I couldn’t let him out
in last week’s snow, could I?
He seems content, his feet
sticky against the screen,
pleased to drink, when I uncurl his proboscis
with a toothpick,
dip it in honey water while he sucks
through his trunk-like tongue.
I say he because he has a particular marking
that means boy,
which is good for our family
of two lesbians, two bitches
(a Shepherd and a Lab),
and thirty thousand girl bees
who spent the whole autumn
dragging the hairy drones
out of the hive, killing them,
dumping the corpses in a heap out front.
I’m just saying, it’s good to have
a bit of masculine energy round here,
even if it’s just one Monarch
who hangs upside-down all day
and sometimes flutters his gorgeous wings.