![\"l-s-klatt.jpg\"](\"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/04\/l-s-klatt.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\nWhen you talk to the bee-eaters they pretend
\nyou are not there. You can follow them
\ninto Madagascar & across the Mozambique
\nChanel & still not register
\nan acknowledgment. This is sad because you
\nmean no harm & you have taken
\ngreat pains to mimic their trills, chuckles,
\n& whistles. Just to hear Darwin
\nspeak of them, you know that the scythe
\nof their bills is made for the erratic
\nsnatch of wings midflight, &, as the wings
\nare indigestible, they eject them. This is
\nnot to say that bee-eaters sugar their songs
\nwith upbeats before disgorging—far
\nfrom it. Sometimes they beat the bee
\nagainst a branch, then croak. You are
\nsurprised that a diet of stingers yields a rain-
\nbow plumage, but, given one more reason
\nto quail, you hardly blush. The mistake
\nis to imagine on moonlit nights
\nyou are one of them.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\nCloud of Ink<\/i><\/a>, the second poetry collection by L.S. Klatt, is one of the recipients of the 2010 Iowa Poetry Prize<\/a>. Other poems in the collection include “A Sudden Unspeakable Indignation<\/a>” (published in Eleven Eleven<\/i>), “Ovation<\/a>” (Drunken Boat<\/i>), and “Crete<\/a>” (Verse<\/i>; along with “Cortona”).<\/p>\n