Armine Iknadossian: The Locust

In Plato’s Phaedrus, Socrates says that locusts were once human.

Everywhere I look there are truth seekers
in their grandfather’s green army jackets waiting
for their lives to begin. Somewhere
a light bulb is replaced, a doorknob turns,
and so many appear with nothing to say.

Like a sentence that has no future.
It is a ballast of shame, a rendering
of stillness – a movement towards God.
We feed, and feeding, grow,
and growing, swarm. But this is not the message.

This prayer is far from that,
as far as a sinner can be, as only a woman
with hunger and pride would rather hide
behind her words than give them up,
would much rather live among the poison wheat.

Previously published in Cultural Weekly