The yellow-jacket fumbles like a novice
on a closed creamsicle-colored bud
while, all around, honey bees
slip into open blunderbusses of blossoms
and emerge filthy with sugardust.
What is she doing there?
Maybe that hard and mostly hairless thing
is tired of the stereotypes
and in epiphany saw her stinger tipped not
with the flesh of a child’s careless foot
but with the dandruff
of those joyously filthy flowers.
-C. Hiatt O’Connor
A recent graduate of the University of Lynchburg in Virginia, he has received multiple honors for creative writing, including: the 2019 Libbie Keaton LaPrade writing award; 2019 Belle M. Hill poetry award; and the Miriam T. & Jude Pfister prize from the Academy of American Poets in 2019 and 2020.