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| Image source: “StarLink Corn: What Happened” |
It was only a kernel of corn
that dropped from a bag
that someone bought at the market
but the kernel of corn
grew and kissed the rest
of the corn silks rustling
on stalks to its right, its left
so they become the genetically
engineered corn just like
the seed that was dropped
changing the 10,000 year old
Mexican corn, changing what
they thought was pure
into a genetically modified crop,
and not just one plot
it was all of them,
the cast of the wind
the kiss of a bee,
the hop of a katydid,
all them bringing pollen
from across the boundary
that corn cannot see,
it only bears the fruit;
three ears of corn on one leaf,
dried out stalks, the corn
that the farmer’s wife
pats into tortillas
something he did not bargain for
or even want.
Laura Rodley’s New Verse News poem “Resurrection” appears in The Pushcart Prlze XXXVII: Best of the Small Presses (2013 edition). She was nominated twice before for the Prize as well as for Best of the Net. Her chapbook Rappelling Blue Light, a Mass Book Award nominee, won honorable mention for the New England Poetry Society Jean Pedrick Award. Her second chapbook Your Left Front Wheel is Coming Loose was also nominated for a Mass Book Award and a L.L.Winship/Penn New England Award. Both were published by Finishing Line Press. Co-curator of the Collected Poets Series, she teaches creative writing and works as contributing writer and photographer for the Daily Hampshire Gazette. She edited As You Write It, A Franklin County Anthology, Volume I and Volume II.