By J.D. Smith

I sing the squick and ick of former food,
peach and strawberry furred with mold,
sprouted onion, dust-dry hummus,
leftovers of good intentions, cheeses overripe,
salads bagged and boxed in the refrigerator’s recesses—
lettuce liquefied.

I sing, too, scrap and trimming,
peels apple and potato and the rest,
eggshells, their sharp flecks
recovered from the mixing bowl,
spent coffee grounds and sodden tea leaves.

I sing as well, in lower tones, the body
corrupted, meats softening into damp mass
around cleft bone and sundering gristle,
entombed in foams and plastics
that open with an anaerobic stench.

With no chickens to feed, no hogs to slop,
I tip urban pail and bucket, slime and muck
into a bin emptied on Thursdays
and hauled wherever it goes to break further down
to dirt, perchance to farm.

Thus Edo sustained its million souls,
as we might in these latter days
by completing the Circle of Life
that Elton John sang (if better),
commending to middens and the invertebrates therein
lipids, amino acids, saccharides, stray alcohols,
the trace minerals and elements they rode in on
unto a meshing with what’s been and will be tossed
before taking their next shapes.
If the details fade into the future, I sense
the working of their energies. Their energies.

~~~~~

J.D. Smith’s seventh collection of poetry, The Place That Is Coming to Us, will be published by Broadstone Books in 2025. Awarded Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Smith has also published the fiction collection Transit, the essay collection Dowsing and Science and the children’s picture book The Best Mariachi in the World. He is currently working on projects in several genres. Smith lives in Washington, DC with his wife Paula Van Lare and their rescue animals. Further information and occasional updates are available at www.jdsmithwriter.com.