"Five Poems" by Kenneth Larot Yamat
Ekphrastics: The Cure
At the recent Race for the Cure event
I lost a shoe, I was running too fast,
racing like a roadrunner to prevent
breast cancer, at the race I had a blast
and met new people and old friends who had
lost a friend of family member to breast
cancer, some were happy, others were sad,
all of them passed a recent cancer test,
so there I was, with a single shoe on
my feet, the other shoe lost, running half
barefoot to the finish line, I had gone
six miles without the shoe, the Susan staff
stared as though I were an ignoramus
this race will not make you rich or famous.
Ekphrastics: Chalice
A gold chalice on the dinner table,
filled with God knows what, maybe it's breast milk,
the positive health effects a fable,
full of chemicals and poisons that bilk
a newborn baby from having a bright
and healthy beginning, it used to be
that nursing and breast feeding was the right
thing to do, but now the toxicity
of breast milk makes it a dangerous thing
to do, formula milk is not any
better, contaminants in the tap bring
poisons straight to a baby's mouth, heavy
metals, and pesticides, and endocrine
disruptors, deadly enzymes, and chlorine.
Ekphrastics: Last Desperate Press
An atom of gold, that precious metal,
wars one and lost over glittering specks,
an arduous test of mankind's mettle,
those arteries of gold a thug protects.
Contaminating waterways with lead,
gallons of arsenic and mercury,
the extraction leaves the countryside dead,
as people extract gold in a hurry.
From the death of stars, a supernova,
precious and glittering aurum is born,
adorning the palace of Cordova,
the death of Africans that none will mourn.
And what is the price of glorious gold:
death and suffering to millions untold.
Ekphrastics: DNA Rules
When it comes to GMO's there are no
rules, it's the wild west out there, Syngenta
Dow Chemical, Bayer, and Monsanto,
slicing and dicing the genes of vegeta-
bles like those other disasters: mortgage
backed securities. Surviving heavy
pesticide and chemical use. Engage
some genes, suppress others and in every
way fundamentally change what we eat:
the pollen of GMO's lodged in our
nasal cavities, the vegetable skeet
that infiltrates our wind pipes by the hour.
Unlike European countries there are
no labeling rules or an outright bar.
Ekphrastics: More than Light
A pile of acorns gathered by some
squirrel stocking up for a winter that
without a doubt will eventually come.
Fighting for food with mouse and bird and rat
hoping to have enough to last it all
winter, hiding the nuts beneath the soil
during the seasons: spring, summer, and fall,
in a place the squirrel knows they won't spoil.
What was this place like before settlers came
and tamed the land with orchards and buildings?
block after block of buildings all the same
without a care of the squirrel's feelings.
No more trees to climb up or ditches to
hide in and no more rivers to swim through.
"Five Poems" by Kenneth Larot Yamat
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