THE SWORD
We tied a sword to a line and hung
it from the rafters for the king.
A poetic illustration; in this court
no mere bravado, no joke. We wait
for daybreak when the feast is done
and we are sent to rest our heads.
We will chuckle in the moment twixt
sleep and the thought that it was we
who entered the abyss for Dionysius's gold.
We plowed the fields, and we built the silos.
Men made of harder elements than all
required to smith the king’s sword
build his state and keep it standing.
Without the agency to be sycophants
we erected his palace and serve his court
an amaranthine feast of wanton riches.
We perform in silence, with a dagger
at our throat. No surprise that none
in court—not Damocles, not Dionysus—
would have the guts to trade with one of us.
The wealth of the world will never tempt
king nor court to risk a seat at the table.
We wait to sleep under swords we smithed.
We wait to dream the dreams of honeybees.
T.K. Edmond is a Fort Worth, Texas writer, musician, and graduate student in English at the University of Texas at Arlington. T.K. is interested in dramaturgy, beauty and cruelty colliding in Texas, and general conceptualism. Work published in 2022 can be found in Strukturriss, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Broad River Review, The Minison Project, and Abridged.