Kathryn Smith At the World’s End Gulls pry mussels at the hinge. Their shells grow useless, tangled in bladderwrack and dead man’s bootlaces. Hoofprints in sand but no sight of the deer. River otters wrestle in the shallows, bare their teeth. When did the world begin cleaving? Urchins probe with ink-bright spines. They have no […]

Kathryn Smith American Girl A dead snake, a note from a torture victim, and a car driven intentionally into a crowd. The celebrity posts a selfie. This whole world is a bad joke. The company reveals the next Doll of the Year as the pageant announces the wrong Miss Universe, Miss Colombia bowing as last […]

Kathryn Smith Current Event I went to sleep with dirt in my pocket and woke with vines sprouting at my hip sockets, circling my thighs. This was bound to happen one day, ashes to ashes and all such rhetoric. The heart of the matter is no heart at all: no strings of sinew pumping no […]

Kathryn Smith To Whomever is Managing the Crisis The hens pluck out their feathers, line a nest for invisible chicks. Parasites infest. Microscopic. The sea once carried the diatoms I sprinkle on the ant hill. I commit this death. Their bodies desiccate and writhe. Creatures all. I say “kombucha” as a mild epithet or a […]