Heidi Kasa writes poetry and fiction. Her poem “The Bullet Cures” won the 2023 Poetry Super Highway Poetry Contest, and her fiction has been a finalist for a Digging Press award, a Black Lawrence Press award, and shortlisted for a Fractured Lit award. Kasa’s work has appeared in The Racket, Meat for Tea, Ab Terra, and Ruminate: The Waking, among others. She’s the author of the fiction chapbook Split (Monday Night Press, 2022). Her story “Mechanical Mommy” is in the Mixed Bag of Tricks anthology. Kasa works as an editor and lives in Austin. See more of her work at www.heidikasa.com.

Pull-Push

pulling most visible
a whole world of pull
the flower’s sweet nectar
drawing around a bee’s neck
its orange and yellow colors
a force a bee can’t explain –
but knows

pushing most visible
in the waves
a crash undeniable
flowing one way
to reverse and go the other
swallowing itself –
a Jekyll-Hyde transformation

pulling most invisible
a drawing in one feels
but can’t explain
wind to struggle against
or surrender to,
like when the ocean calls your name –
no answer, but you go

pushing most invisible
the bee’s mouth opening for pollen
plunging into nectar –
is that a push –
the calling of pollen
itself a push –
that pulls the bee inside its center

pulling
a loose rock from the wall
aching for destabilization –
is that a push –
the calling of a mouth opening
to surrender to music –
the only necessary surrender

pushing
into space, making a claim
to push off gravity
or pull it with you
the force the question,
the answer, the problem,
its solution – how it runs away with you