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Amanda Moore’s debut collection of poetry, Requeening, was selected for the 2020 National Poetry Series by Ocean Vuong and published by HarperCollins/Ecco in October 2021. Engaging the matriarchal structure of the beehive, Amanda Moore explores the various roles a woman plays in the family, the home, and the world at large. Beyond the productivity and excess, the sweetness and sting, Requeening brings together poems of motherhood and daughterhood, an evolving relationship of care and tending, responsibility and joy, dependence and deep love.
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Poems
Poems
Haibun on the High BunBeside her in the bathroom mirror before school, I watch the girl prepare herself for the world. One minute still goofy and young—eyes bright, cheeks child-plump, teeth with their scalloped bottoms, and all those freckles—then everything shifts as she twists and spins her hair, lifting it to chignon. So self-assured, as if the gesture were always hers, and she never sat on the floor at my feet while I unsnarled and brushed despite protest, pigtailed and ponytailed, learned to braid and style on demand. Now, in one smooth, solitary motion, she slides a hair tie from her wrist where it hangs like a jeweled bangle and secures this perfect bun herself, her transformation as sudden and dramatic as in the stories she used to beg me to read: sparkling wand, tulle and glitter, fairy godmother. No princess here, just a very real girl covering her acne, glossing her lips, pulling out a few casual strands of hair to trail down the long arc of her neck, which descends from fresh-pierced lobes to shadows cupped in collar bones. What grace she is, this momentary woman, who will soon be the only version of the girl I know.
Not chameleon, nothummingbird though she changes,flits about, becomes new.
Not chameleon, nothummingbird though she changes,flits about, becomes new.
My Still Life with Wasps
I’ve lived in three homes in this town.In three homes, waspsnestled my walls:
paper hives blooming wildly,unwanted August weeds.They burrow toward my sleeping sounds at night,
and in the day they track me,little sentinels from doorto driveway to door again.
The Bee Man arrives,poisons this new nestand can only cross his fingers.
Once before they died in poolsalong my porch. Another,they chewed through the wall and writhed
in inch-thick ribbons on my beduntil death gripped them in its teeth.Once nestled, a home cannot
cut wasps loose to life, send them flyingto wilder, wider eaves,an abandoned house or hollow tree—
this isn’t like the mother’s body, babybreaking womb to emerge aliveand far from what it fed upon.
The house swells with waspsthat will be carried out only by death.I am not afraid of such evil birth.
I’ve lived in three homes in this town.In three homes, waspsnestled my walls:
paper hives blooming wildly,unwanted August weeds.They burrow toward my sleeping sounds at night,
and in the day they track me,little sentinels from doorto driveway to door again.
The Bee Man arrives,poisons this new nestand can only cross his fingers.
Once before they died in poolsalong my porch. Another,they chewed through the wall and writhed
in inch-thick ribbons on my beduntil death gripped them in its teeth.Once nestled, a home cannot
cut wasps loose to life, send them flyingto wilder, wider eaves,an abandoned house or hollow tree—
this isn’t like the mother’s body, babybreaking womb to emerge aliveand far from what it fed upon.
The house swells with waspsthat will be carried out only by death.I am not afraid of such evil birth.
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