Bee Suit: poems by James Lee. Number 2 in Volume Fourteen of our limited-edition Summer Kitchen Series.

Publication:  August 5, 2026
Limited edition – only 49 copies
17 pages
$ 12.00

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James Lee received an M.F.A. from the University of California, Irvine, where he studied under poets Gabrielle Calvocoressi, James McMichael, and Michael Ryan. His poems have appeared in the minnesota review, Juked, and Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment. He is currently at work on a manuscript of poems tentatively entitled “Cheating the House.” He teaches writing and lives in upstate South Carolina with his wife and two children.

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The bees manifest the interior life of the host. The welcome you feel
shifts the understanding of the relationship.
The trouble with you is not merely passive but demanding
utter deference. It too is subsumed and made to stand as one part
alike. People want the importance of several decades instantly,
when what you really want to do is get rid of this.
Truth is you do not have a knack for beekeeping.
It comes from you, perhaps, after much physical concentration.
You stare, or never readily blink, your hands always in the air.
You think your aversion must be symptomatic of a flawed conception of
being—fear enabling persistence that only want of desire threatens.
First, a change within, then love, then a corresponding change without.

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