A man in prison spends hours
constructing elaborate mazes
on the floor with match sticks.
He pools Tabasco at the end
then lays down a thin trail
of sugar to guide ants
when they come. They come,
and he watches them wind
methodically through his maze.
When they reach the pool
of Tabasco they falter.
Some die, and then more,
until the pile of dead becomes
a bridge. Ants that cross
over are rewarded
with a small mound of sugar
they carry off a crystal at a time.
In Hiroshima those far
from the hypo-center still speak
of the pika followed by the don.
Those close don’t remember
seeing the pika or hearing the don.
What they remember is heaving
under their feet. What we remember
is mushroom cloud
leading the eye higher, until
the man excusing himself
for bumping dead bodies
as he stumbles naked
down the street is almost
too small to see.

–Patty Paine,
The Sounding Machine (2012)
Accents Publishing

Patty Paine is the author of Feral (Imaginary Friend Press), Elegy & Collapse (Finishing Line Press), and co-editor of Gathering the Tide: An Anthology of Contemporary Arabian Gulf Poetry (Garnet Publishing & Ithaca Press). Her poems, reviews, and interviews have appeared in Blackbird: an online journal of literature and the arts, The Atlanta Review, Gulf Stream, The Journal and many other publications. She is the founding editor of Diode Poetry Journal, and is an assistant professor of English at Virginia Commonwealth University Qatar where she teaches writing and literature, and is assistant director of Liberal Arts & Sciences.