What I meant is that when the child shook the branch,
the beetles, quiet, somnolent, darkly, fell and again fell
like plums. Once woken, they bzzzed towards
the street lamps, loving each light well, thwacking
against them until they landed face down or face
up, trying to find their feet, reminding me of Eve’s face
as a baby when she tried to lift her head on her stem
of a neck before yet she could. Upon the child’s shoulders,
beetles landed, kinging him . . .
from NER 38.4
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Nomi Stone is the author of the forthcoming collection of poems Kill Class (Tupelo Press, 2019) and Stranger’s Notebook (TriQuarterly, 2008). A Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Anthropology at Princeton University, Stone has an MFA in poetry from Warren Wilson College. Her poems have appeared, or are forthcoming, in New Republic, Bettering American Poetry 2017, The Best American Poetry 2016, Poetry Northwest, Sixth Finch, diode, and elsewhere. “Wonder Days” was inspired by Thalia Gigerenzer’s podcast “On Wonder” (www.thaliagig.com/on-wonder/).