Poetry. "Near the end, she spoke as if waking from a dream/ to common light,/ her fingers on the bedclothes/ untying words to loose like petals of fog.// Whenever her husband's bees/ swarmed from their hives, the noise/ like a saw inside her pulse, she had to run/ after them and bang a kettle with a big spoon,/ a sound the escaping swarm would take for thunder/ and settle on a branch to be caught and housed.// She cried then, she said--just sat and wept,/ every time she saw the bees betrayed--/ and couldn't explain,/ ringed by shocked children, the voice/ of the angry swarm/ that followed her across decades:/ bees, their penned fury."--from the text. James Owens, a native of Virginia, worked for some years in journalism before earning an MFA from the University of Alabama. He now lives in La Porte, Indiana, with his wife and three children, where he works in educational assessment and spends as much time as possible wandering the dunes along the southern shore of Lake Michigan. This is his second book of poems.

Author City: Lu Porte, IN USA

James Owens has published in many magazines, including Birmingham Poetry Review, The Pedestal Magazine, Boxcar Poetry Review, and Mimesis. A native of Virginia, he worked for some years in journalism before earning an MFA from the University of Alabama. He now lives in La Porte, Indiana, with his wife and three children, where he works in educational assessment and spends as much time as possible wandering the dunes along the southern shore of Lake Michigan. This is his second book of poems.