MARIO CHARDTwo Kingdoms
A son says this is my kingdom. His father sees the play, says this is my kingdom. Already the son is pointing where their kingdoms meet. But where the father looks he sees only poor in the boy’s kingdom: a cemetery cleared of headstones for the poor to make gardens, a mother who pulled out bones with her potatoes assuring her daughter the bones once made a horse. The father sees the girl assemble the bones into figures, dress them in potato skins. They are headless. They guard her kingdom. Some have shoots growing from their eyes. The father sees the mother remake the same small hole with her hands. He confuses repetition for digging. The father says there are only poor in your kingdom. The son forgets what kingdom means. 154 The Paris-American 
Mario Chard
was born in northern Utah and educated at Weber State University, Purdue
University, and Stanford University as a Wallace Stegner Fellow in Poetry.
Recent poems have appeared or are forthcoming in the Beloit
Poetry Journal, Boston Review, Colorado Review, FIELD, and Indiana Review, among others. A winner of the 2012 “Discovery” / Boston
Review Poetry Prize, he currently writes and teaches in
Utah where he lives with his wife and sons.
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Next week's poet:
Fatimah Asghar 
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