I confuse
their names
when I inform my husband
I spotted the vine
cavorting in the garage’s shadow
again
my check-writing hand
still smarting from the $600 paid
to two men with families
far far to the south
who
from noon to dusk
unwrapped
from the vine’s stranglehold
forsythia lilac lily
hydrangea which had once bloomed
blue as sky after a weekful of rain
their brown arms uncovering
a nest of white-faced hornets
hidden in the dense tangle—
the vine’s only survivors.
It is a bitter thing
to rip out such sweetness by the root
a vine so exuberant and cheerful
its clouds of flowers drip
only innocence and scent.
BITTERSWEET HONEYSUCKLE by Claire Zoghb | Lemon Poetry Reed Diffuser
Claire Zoghb is the author of the poetry collection Small House Breathing (Quercus Review Press), as well as the chapbooks Dispatches from Everest (Fomite Press) and Boundaries (Blue Lyra Press). She is a past winner of the Dogwood Poetry Prize and the Nazim Hikmet Poetry Competition, and was twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Her poems have appeared widely in journals such as Mizna, Bellevue Literary Review, Sukoon, One, Comstock Review, as well as in several anthologies including the forthcoming The Color Wheel (Terrapin Books, 2026). She lives on the Connecticut, USA shoreline where she works as a graphic designer.
