Some Facts

Erik Kennedy

They passed a law that said
if you had an emerald,
they would give you an emerald.
If you were the possessor
of a flawless tanzanite,
to you another tanzanite would come.
And so on down the published lists
of gemstones and minerals:
owners would be rewarded.
To those who owned nothing,
the gravel-less classes,
the reward was the joy
of reading the law itself,
considering its dazzling operation.
Scholars of law,
when meeting in pubs,
set out in slow motion
and three dimensions
the case for the law’s efficacy.
And scholars of pubs,
when meeting in these same pubs
at the same time,
looked out the windows
and saw people in the streets
making guesses,
carrying their baskets of doubt
and pulling their wagons of perplexity.
The law did this, too.
And these are some of the facts.

ERIK KENNEDY is the author of There’s No Place Like the Internet in Springtime (Victoria University Press, 2018), and he selected the poetry for Queen Mob’s Teahouse: Teh Book (Dostoyevsky Wannabe, 2019). His poetry and criticism have recently been published in Hobart, The Moth, Poetry, Spoon River Poetry Review, and The Times Literary Supplement. Originally from New Jersey, he lives in Christchurch, New Zealand.