"Yellowjackets" by Chelsea Catherine

for Sinéad O'Connor

“This disgusting world broke her and kept on breaking her.”

-Shirley Manson

Yellowjackets

are social wasps

feed their young the meat of

insects

some, the same shape as them.

chewing on raw hide, crunchy thorax

sweet, juicy abdomen

partially ingesting before regurgitating

for their larvae

amassing,

grinding,

perfecting.

yellowjackets

inhabit large colonies, tiered combs

buried underground in tree stumps, hollow logs

earth dwellers who never sleep.

workers live for weeks while

the queen survives for months

dominating, impregnated

an endless cycle

of birthing,

feeding,

eating.

yellowjackets

once I stepped on a nest in the ground

two dozen mincing my flesh

burrowing the pork of my heel

their stingers prodding

sharp as barbed wire.

even years later

my skin could still recall the sensation

of them feasting,

slicing,

gnawing.

yellowjackets

voracious consumers

nettling little cannibals

like high school girls or

heads of companies, CEOs.

it feels at times

as if the whole world is one big swarm

pecking at fleshy tissue and muscle

for gossip,

stories,

failure,

meat meat meat

in memoriam for Sinéad Marie Bernadette O'Connor

Chelsea Catherine won the Mary C Mohr award for nonfiction through the Southern Indiana Review and their second book, Summer of the Cicadas, won the Quill Prose Award from Red Hen Press. In 2022, they spent a month in Alaska at the Alderworks Artists Retreat. They are part of a cohort of ValleyCreates artist grantees in Western Massachusetts, and their work can be found in Hobart, Passengers Journal, The Florida Review, and others.