i had understood finding the cure
to be something like a treasure
hunt: deciphering clues left by god
to find his buried treasure chest
filled with the light we seek.
//
a neighbor,
whose dad works in pharmaceuticals,
believes a cure has been found but is kept
hidden behind the billfolds.
//
a cancer center sponsors
a major league soccer team—
their logo is cancer
crossed out in red ink like their goal
is to leave their oncologists jobless.
//
while weeding my mother’s flower bed,
years before her diagnosis,
i pulled a bulb from the earth
i didn’t recognize & tossed it
into the plastic among the suffocating weeds.
Jace Raymond Smellie earned his MFA in poetry at George Mason University. Originally from Pocatello, Idaho, Jace is a descendent of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes. He was awarded a 2021 MFA Travel Fellowship from The Alan Cheuse Center for International Writers, and his recent poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Southern Humanities Review, Passages North, Ocean State Review, Cimarron Review, and elsewhere.