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 blood. When I die I want
to come back exoskeletal
and hemolymphic. That way,
when someone says, “What,
have you been living under a rock?”
I can say, “Yes!” and say it proudly.
For I have been burrowing
and breaking down the stalks
of dead things. I have been
the meaning of renewal, and what
have you been doing with all
your popular information?
The mainstream
streams fast, and if you only have
four limbs, you’ll sweep away
in the current. An ant is a thing
that buoys, especially when
it’s channeling its true ant-ness,
collectively conscious and bound
by the mandible to more of its kind.
These barbs at the mouth
are good for something.
Kathryn Smith is the author of Book of Exodus (Scablands Books, 2017). Her poems have appeared in such publications as Redivider, Mid-American Review, Bellingham Review, Carve Magazine, Southern Indiana Review, and Rock & Sling. She lives is Spokane, WA, and is the recipient of a grant from the Spokane Arts Fund.
SUBMIT to What Rough Beast via our SUBMITTABLE site.