Little Bee
By Alison Tan
after Elizabeth-Jane Burnett
Thistle swing, babbling cream, lisp of brush. Once upon Grandmother’s blush. Chortling fuzz and
dart. Dip. Slick of tooth, you gold trombone. Weave a life with summerteeth. Weave a song with bridal
wreath. Snip. The leaf, the stem, their sip. Dream. Drink your heart on smell of silk. Swell your wings
on burning milk. Twist. Day is what you forgot. Noon is an apricot. Cup runs over in a fuddle.
Goldenrod and mountain huddle. Grip. You’re in the sail of prairie skirt, the laughter in the butter.
Bites of day dust pulled asunder. You’re the sun’s beluga whale. Cactus soft, cactus yearn, cactus sweet.
All the things you bring. Your booming breath, your coin-shy gleam. Bury badgers in the soil. See them
bloom. Conclude with chomp of musty peach. Hushstroke of greatest heat. Now go to ground. A
divot in the sunset, shush, sleep of loom. Lip. Lamplit room.
Alison Clara Tan is a Southeast Asian writer based in London. Her poetry appears or is forthcoming in fourteen poems, wildness, The Kenyon Review, Gutter Magazine and Washington Square Review, among others. She is a Barbican Young Poet, a London Library Emerging Writer, a Brooklyn Poets Fellow, a member of the London Writer Centre's 2025 Poetics Lab Cohort and has been a resident artist at the Hawkwood Centre for Future Thinking.