I open my refrigerator and find
The Stop Violence Coalition News
next to the figs and lemon curd.
I spread fear for my world on
five-grain bread from Whole Earth Foods.

Isn’t hope a sweet, fat fig?
The tiny fig wasp crawls to the center
through a narrow ostiole.
Her antennae snap, her wings
shear off in the journey. Wrapped

in darkness, she lays her necessary 
eggs, else the worlds of Wasp and Fig 
expire. Is there no beauty 
without misfortune? asks Baudelaire.
Surely— yet,

her body, in each sweet, hypnotic
bite.