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Poem-a-Day

The only daily poetry series publishing new work by today’s poets.

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Poem-a-day

At the end of the world, you tell me about the bees

Where, in this century, have I truly begun?
I was born afraid. And then a friend.
The friendship I had to learn, through trial
and every salt whisker of water, disappearing.

Loss made me, iron-hot, shaped me.
Without this ember grief, only burnished
light remains. Snowless.

In the great room of many volatile gods
where I keep burning. Hot grass.
Absence of trees. In which a world keeps noxiously turning
for the survival of what?     Gives loss its feral name.

Define  allegiance. Against the frame.
Who will love me when I am at last
ungovernable?     Answers the underground.

When I say I love you,
I mean before the conflagration of gods, their cruelty,
there is a door ablaze. I walk through.

All my life. Unceremonious, the morbid temperature
of a year. And then another. In the land of  despite, despite.
Let us fortify our rage. Incandescent.
Beneath the countenance of despair,
                                   you hold my face, holding me.

You have kept me. So, I am alive.
So you know how it ends.
To hear the wedding of the bees.

Copyright © 2026 by Muriel Leung. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on June 2, 2026, by the Academy of American Poets.

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Muriel Leung

Muriel Leung
Courtesy of Muriel Leung
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About Poem-a-Day

Poem-a-Day is the original and only daily digital poetry series featuring over 250 new, previously unpublished poems by today’s talented poets each year. Sam Sax is the Guest Editor for June. Read or listen to a Q&A with Sax about their curatorial process, and learn more about the 2026 Guest Editors. Support Poem-a-Day.  

If you have any questions about Poem-a-Day, visit our Poem-a-Day FAQ.

Previous Poems

Title Author Date
Lullaby of the Onion Miguel Hernández
Lean Into It Emily Hunerwadel
The Future Is Here Bianca Stone
[Death is a daisy sleeping] Joyce Mansour , Emilie Moorhouse
Loveliest of Trees A. E. Housman
The Road at My Door W. B. Yeats
Elegy with Icarus and the Heart of a Hummingbird James Hoch
The Fifth of May Manuel Acuña
Odysseus at the Mast Gerald Barrax
The Summer House Tony Connor

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