Transmitter and Receiver. Raoul Fernandes

      a bumblebee sitting motionless on a stalk of fireweed,

      believes the bee has expired with its head inside a flower,

      its legs heavy with pollen. It’s beautiful, it’s sad, it’s tragic,

      he says in a breathless small-town-movie-theatre-cashier voice.

      He steadies the camera on the fireweed, thinks

      about that line in a song: Lord let me die

      with a hammer in my hand.

      I love that bee, he says.

      The tapes contain hours of footage. There he is

      resting his hand on some warm bear scat.

      It came from inside her, he says. It was just inside her.

      There he is screaming for rain during a drought,

      when the salmon aren’t running and the bears

      are eating their own children.

      Timothy films himself

      holding a bear cub’s skull.

      Lord let me die

      with my head inside a flower.

      He looks into the holes where the cub’s eyes would be.

      Looks away much too soon.

      When the bee moves Tim realizes

      it was just sleeping. Days later, a bear paws honey

      from Tim’s chest. He is moaning, his girlfriend

      screaming. The camera covers its eyes.

      Love disperses like light

      across the Alaskan wilderness.

      You Were Depressed. There Were More Birds.

      You were depressed. There were more birds

      in the yard.

      Rising from the chair was difficult. The yard

      was overgrown.

      The lawnmower was in the shed. The weeds

      were flowering.

      You couldn’t get to the lawnmower. The grass

      was as tall as your shoulders.

      You were unable to summon the strength. The yard

      was audible with insects.

      You touched the windowpane’s glass. The outside world

      thrummed with hidden creatures.

      You were depressed. There were swallows, finches,

      flickers and wrens.

      The Tulip Vending Machine

      An artificial sun over rows of tulips,

      a scheduled rain that mists

      the garden.

      You put a coin in a slot, a blade

      curves out, lops

      a flower near the base

      of its stem

      and sometimes

      if the stems are too close

      or blade slightly off

      it accidentally cuts two—this

      is what moves you, how the flaw

      makes the machine seem organic,