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The Missouri Review

Poem of the Week | March 16, 2015

Mark Smith: "Famine Genii"

This week we feature a new poem by Mark Smith. Smith is a novelist who has published some eighty poems in various magazines including most recently in New Delta, Midwestern, and New Ohio Reviews. His novel The Death of the Detective has been republished by Brash Books. Four other novels are available as e-books from Foreverland Press.
 
Author’s note:

During a period when the nightly news featured the several famines then in Asia and Africa, I encountered just such a young lady as is featured in the poem. I can still see her face and hear her voice—she touched me deeply.

 

Famine Genii

 

The treks, the makeshift camps

 

and hospitals, the ribs, the bellies,

 

the starving Bronze Age nomadic

 

child with black matchstick bones

 

in brilliant scarves who spends

 

the first of three magic wishes

 

granted by her genii when she wishes

 

for a loaf of bread, but then retracting

 

and wasting that wish, spends the second

 

on a gift too incomprehensible

 

for her to fathom: for once, oh,

 

just for once, her fill of bread.

 

And what delectable sensation

 

would that be like? her smile

 

asks in simple wonderment.

 

No third wish is made. Or needed.

 

And the child, so tragically

 

composed and beautiful, already

 

in her shriveled place among the pharaohs.

 

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