Austin Robert Smith

POISONING ANTS

Here's how it works: thinking it a new source
Of food, the scouts bring the stuff back
To the Queen. Entering her chamber,
They humble themselves before her,
The poison in their jaws. They are already dying,
But mistake how they feel for the feeling
Of finally having been allowed to come
Before the Queen, who, for some reason,
I imagine lying on a plush velvet bed,
Surrounded by those she has come to trust,
The ones with the most beautiful abdomens.
Of these scouts she is rightly wary,
Suspicious of what they have brought her
The way a human queen would be
Suspicious of the lukewarm meal
An unfamiliar servant sets before her.
She gestures and one approaches, shy
And proud to have been the one chosen.
From his mouth to hers passes the delectable
Nectar he has brought her from afar,
Unlike anything she has ever tasted. Later,
After her body has been eaten, after
They have died by the thousands,
His corpse is indistinguishable from all
The others. But it was he, of all those dead
Who were nothing to her, who she loved.