Hunger

It’s only in the last year, really
that I’ve allowed myself to think
about it – about
what it might have been actually like
There.

I’ve permitted myself
to read.
And once, late,
past midnight, to
view photographs
posted on the internet:
stark black and whites,
three of each person
one from each side,
one full front.
Although I was not
allowed
to stop and examine them closely, some
details were inescapable.
A woman’s wiry hair
matted into a halo around her
head as though she had
just been used to mop the
floor; Fear, thinly
disguised as intellect,
peering shadowlike
though wire-rimmed spectacles;
Fear, bursting beneath a black silk
bosom. Fear in every eye
that catches mine.
They
know. They all know.

The photos I was looking for were not posted.
Perhaps there
was no time for foolery
and cameras on that day.

With each morsel of
knowledge I gain,
my hunger grows.
I’ve never been able to throw even
a potato skin away
but now the pots of
leftovers in the fridge
whisper insistently to me in the
night. I stumble into the kitchen not
an hour after dinner and
gorge myself on
cold pasta, congealed beans,
a sandwich with
questionable mayonnaise
which has been to a picnic at the river
and back and spent
a week in repose wrapped
in sandy tinfoil on the
second shelf, pink slices of
ham, the flesh tearing as
I hastily extract them from the plastic
encasing, explaining (as I push the soft
folds into my mouth)
to the
air that it is allowable to
break kosher in cases of emergency.

The more I know, the
more I need to atone,
to stuff my gullet,
round my bodyinto curves and
counter curves.
I’m doing it now, I
tell you. I’m eating a
bagel as I write, the seeds
dripping onto the
paper, cream cheese
smudging the corner
as I turn the page,
plate resting on the hill of my belly.
eating as if sheer gluttonywere the antidote to
starvation. I bought half a
dozen this morning
and the three that
are left are calling
to me, plaintively
twining their poppyseeded fingers
through the razor wire,
begging.