The movie, “Being Flynn,” based on Nick Flynn’s memior Another Bullshit Night in Suck City came out last week. To celebrate that, and because Nick Flynn is just a badass poet in general, we’re breaking out his poem from Issue 9.

Pheromone
by Nick Flynn

Sky electric after this midsummer
drought, but a day of rain

won’t be enough. The clover won’t return,
or the nights we slept the fields,

clinging to their petals. The keeper clips

the grass outside the hive,
& the old guard, full of venom,
prods us to attack. We stud her suit with stingers

until we hang dead from the netting,
until she becomes the word enemy, her arms

flailing. Jagged light

surrounds us, her daughter
waits in their truck, screams, the air
brightens. From this distance

she looks no bigger than a possum
as she mouths the word mother.

Nick Flynn’s Another Bullshit Night in Suck City won the PEN/Martha Albrand Award, and was shortlisted for France’s Prix Femina. His third collection of poetry, The Captain Asks for a Show of Hands, was released by Graywolf earlier this year.