qarrtsiluni

by J.D. Smith

After Kay Ryan

Whatever he touched
would turn to dry dirt
or, worse,
a ferment of leaf mold,
great slops of mud,
silt and clay
interspersed with turds,
the rest sand and loam.

He shrank from throne and country
and died convinced of his defeat,
leaving the people to their fields,
which for once yielded
enough to eat.

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J.D. Smith’s third collection, Labor Day at Venice Beach, will be published in 2012. In 2007 he was awarded a Fellowship in Poetry from the National Endowment for the Arts. Periodic updates are available on his blog Smitroverse.