Under Hunger's Zodiac
O ravenous light by which I map my way
Here—and in time for Thanksgiving—is a poem about that wild dance of hunger which has us in its grip and flings us and flummoxes us. Unpublished at present but here for you loud and clear.
Under Hunger’s Zodiac
In the Shop ‘n Save Mart my wife and I find flowers jacketed
in plastic, red peppers the color
of fire engines, shelves higher than my head
loaded with squishy bread
in rainbow-colored bags. Choose the food
that will hurt you
the least, I tell myself, and standing
in that bright room crammed with corporate meat
and vegetables I try to dream that bread back
to its true source, say a field of wheat
and a man driving a combine
through it, the snatched-up grain blurring into the hopper
trailing behind—
or some factory where the loaves on the belt must be a blur
also, as though speed alone
were the goal and only on the plate is our food
stilled, held for a moment
in that brief ceremony of table
and chair. There’s that welcoming frame of mind
you can find yourself in
in a restaurant, that luxurious headspace
you can settle into
simply by entering that theater
where hunger and ignorance make miracle of a burger covered
in extra cheese, of French fries
cut from potatoes fattened in a field where you
have never walked. As though luxury
were simply ignorance
of where the water starts, of how the pig was killed.
At the end of my first shift
at the bakery the floor manager told me
to take whatever I wanted from the long wooden table
strewn with hardening baguettes
and dinner rolls, with knobbled loaves of sourdough
and flaking croissants still shiny
with their two-day-old glaze of egg-whites
and butter—and giddy with delight
but guilty also
I turned to the bearded man camped out
in a worn chair
by the timeclock and said “You want any of this?”
But “No thanks,” is all he growled
back, and then “I’m the guy
who makes this crap.” No magic for him
anymore, no miracle
but the downward spiral, what bread becomes
in the gut. And months later
with my own delight in free food still intact
I’d wonder if somehow
in the unseen spiritual workings of the world
it was my own greed that kept me
there, earning my slim wages at the cash register
and sandwich board—
as though if I could cleanse myself
of hungers I’d graduate to some higher labor
involving silk scarves
and rose petals, the whirring of olive branches
in summer air. But then
as now the wild rush of craving can strike
in a moment, as when the floor manager cut carefully
into the satin surface
of a triple-decker chocolate cherry torte
only to send a jagged crack
sprawling across its top, the cake blemished
beyond anything we could sell
so that after closing I went home to devour a good half of it
at midnight
in the grassy backyard of the apartment I rented
that year—the dark
of its chocolate rhyming with the dark above me
between the stars, my body
simply a wet mouth
in a universe of appetite where hunger
is the thread binding lions to gazelles and fruit flies
to orange peels, summoning
stockbrokers to hot dogs and raccoons to garbage cans
rattling at night under stars
that are themselves hungers devouring hydrogen
in the devouring
dark, dark in which every knuckle
and hair of me is fuel, sustenance and one day
perhaps even delight
for another. And I’ve read of light shining
from the body of the saint
fasting in his cave but what of hunger’s light
shining ferocious
in the eyes, what of lust for fresh watermelon
or the salt-alphabet of pretzels
in a plastic bag, what of that gladdening desire
for blueberries, beef
jerky, the green moon-rise of a ripe
avocado? O ravenous light
by which I map my way, by which I see the drooping tip
of the pizza slice’s
sauce-mottled triangle glistening
with oils, the chunk
of cheesecake lavish with raspberries, topped
by a whorl of cream—
but who is it
who wants, is it my gut or my tongue or the wild
summer animal
of my belly, who is this one
so joyously desperate to take grilled cheese sandwiches
and fresh-picked grapes
still beaded with water from their rinsing
and make them a part of myself, to crackle the chocolate bar open
and glory it down
into my bones? As though I were simply a fire
dressed briefly
in a name, a want alive only in the rhythm
of its wanting.
And sometimes when sitting before a thrill of pancakes
smeared with butter I’ve caught myself
longing to be hungry
forever, like some legendary goat-king
of the ancient world who craved such a hunger
and was given it
by the gods so that he ate a whole pig from snout
to tail, then a skewer crammed
with roast duck and onions followed by three grilled
sparrows, a steaming bucket of red potatoes boiled
in their jackets, a barrel swirling
with goat milk
and honey—and when these delights
proved not enough started in
on the candles, the forks, the table itself until finally
in the agony of want
that his luxury had become he cried out to Zeus
who sent a rainstorm
down from the clouds to thunder the flesh
from his bones, his human body
cascading off him to reveal the bear within
and beneath that bear
a deer, his body a bestiary of wants
quickly worn down from rabbit to squirrel to beetle
and finally to the worm
he was: last inhabitant
of the self, little gut
without a body but still writhing with its pinkish sorrows
and joys, ravenous and desperate, hungry
for dirt.
Hunger that plays us
and flays us, chorus of the body’s song, ever-returning wind
frazzling the grass. And in the end
after searching the bright agonies of those aisles and finding
nothing, after a crunchy trudge
through the snow-piled streets of that little town back
to our hotel room my wife and I decided
that Chinese take-out
was the answer. So she volunteered
to go back out into the blare of that February
hour, returning a small eternity
later bearing a plastic bag weighed down with little
white boxes—each one
graced with the image of a red pagoda
as though to say that food
is our shelter, each one reminiscent of a tropical flower
in the sure nature
of its unfolding. Inside the first
there was broccoli in garlic sauce, generous florets
green as maple trees in the first flush
of spring, the sauce flecked with red pepper flakes
the crucial color
of blood. Inside the second there was rice
and the steam that rises out of just-cooked rice like its own true
spirit, warming our faces—O brief
sanctuary, O glad flavor
of this world—even as it vanished into air.


I'd like to see/hear you perform this (not necessarily from memory!)