Queen Bee

by Tina Cole

I live on the top floor in a south facing

room, almost hexagonal, with buttercup

walls and loudly sing, Yellow Bird,

in a voice mellifluous with an electric lisp

like a buzz. My beehive hair is stacked

in a network of blonde spun candy,

a faint smell of lemon lingers in my bathroom

and clots of hair block the sink like molten

amber. Today I am magnificent in black

velvet and saffron silk, I have bought

honeyed cake for the men who will line up

to do my bidding.


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Tina Cole is a retired education consultant who lives in rural Herefordshire. She delights in poetry that speaks about relationships and how people manage their inner worlds. Her collection – I Almost Knew You – published in 2015 deliberately brings those relationships into view. Other poems have been published in U.K. magazines and journals such as, (Mslexia, Aesthetica & Decanto), one in The Guardian newspaper and in several recent anthologies. In 2018 she won third place in the Army – Writing Armistice National Competition and second place in the Canterbury Poet of the Year. She is the organiser of the Children’s Poetry Competition; poetryintenbury.org.