ADream in Which I Am Playing with Bees is a collection of poems made of naturalimagery, queer metaphors, personal observations, and historical circumstancessurrounding honeybees. In the aftermath of a fictional bee extinction, thesepoems are presented to the post-bee reader as "artifacts."Playingwith Bees positionspoetry in hindsight to contemplate poetry's "natural" inclinations towardbuilding alternative worlds through earthbound metaphors. Whether a single line or an entire premise, none of the poems could think, speak, or see in the same wayif bees--and the relations they make possible--suddenly disappeared. Like anynatural resource, the bee is a wellspring of possibility. Essential. Fragile.Causal. And like any animal, the pollinating bee has enabled a diverse phylumof phrases and myths that humans trade to express our most hard-to-namefeelings.Whatin our imagination changes after a peg in the environment is removed? Whatcould disappear from our minds, our fantasies, and our self-descriptors, ifnature is no longer a mirror? Consider a museum of language. As artifacts, these poems arethe residue of a dead species--but they are also the offshoots of a playful, abundant, delicate ecosystem. Playing with Bees covets what's left. Atthe bottom of everything, we find the fragments of an ecologically intact dream: an apocalypse in reverse.