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Tuesday, June 09, 2026

AND THEN

by Debbie Benson


then came bees the sizev cats- they

overtook the sky

2put a stop2 our, wherever it was we 


were going? 


they told us we’d failed 2 really see 

our world, 

dizzying us w/eyes like sharded glass.


they dove & purred, unruly w/ yellow, 

nonpoisonous 

if fearsome, aghast but all unwarring,


& w/ them hopes we’d been ignoring 

were dipping also soaring



Debbie Benson’s recent poems appear (or are forthcoming) in Indiana Review, Passages North, Bennington Review, Ninth Letter, and The Penn Review. Past awards include the Ann Stanford Poetry Prize, Vern Cowles Prize, an International Merit Award from Atlanta Review, inclusion in Best New Poets, and a “Best of the Net” nomination. She is a prior contributor at The New Verse News. She works as a clinical psychologist in NYC.