The Issue With The Bee
- Oct 19
- 2 min read
Updated: Oct 31
By Christina M. Rau
No one is
ever really riveted
by a comma
splice
to begin with,
so when
in floats the bee,
all eyes zip up and
across and down and
at all angles,
wherever the little
bee might be.
I shut the lights.
I keep teaching.
What makes a sentence a sentence?
They are all
lost in the literal
flight of the bumble
bee, a dizzying
gauntlet through
Vanessa’s hair—
Caden’s leaky water bottle—
Princess L’s compact
that’s supposed to be away—
Princess S’s sequined book bag—
Smith’s tattooed arm—
Venda’s brace-enclosed knee—
Vanessa’s hair again.
What plus what plus what makes a sentence?
The room is all waving notebooks
and flailing hands, making the bee
nervously angry.
The bee is in your hair again!
What is the subject of the sentence: “The bee is in your hair again!” ?
It flew out!
What is the predicate of the sentence: “It flew out!” ?
The bee has made it to
the glow of the window,
but it can’t get out
because it chose
the window that won’t
open instead of the one
that won’t shut or the one
being held ajar with two
dry erase erasers
wedged haphazardly
at the bottom.
The bee then flies
up into the broken blinds,
and we can’t see it there.
Still, they all stare.
What is the meaning of the sentence: “Pay attention.” ?
Yo, it’s still in here.
Yo, there it is.
Why can’t we put a comma between the two clauses that start with “Yo”?
The bee meanders from under
the blinds and tumbles
out the window to its left.
All eyes on me.
A sentence has two parts,
a classroom has three.
Christina M. Rau, The Yoga Poet, leads Meditate, Move, & Create workshops for various organizations worldwide. Her collections include How We Make Amends and the Elgin Award-winning Liberating The Astronauts. She moderates the Women’s Poetry Listserv and has served as Poet in Residence for Oceanside Library (NY) since 2020. Her poetry airs on Destinies radio show (WUSB) and appears in various literary journals like fillingStation and The Disappointed Housewife while her prose has appeared in Punk Monk Magazine and Reader’s Digest. During her downtime, she watches the Game Show Network.
