Full Hunger Moon

Forty years of hunger. Look:
     her lover is fat, so fat
gorging
     on the pretty stick in the boudoir
trying to keep her make-up straight
each time he lunges:
I am joyful, my love, he says,
feeding.
Her eyes: ripped nets.
Her heart: squashed fruit.
Her breasts are emptied vats
that knew the moon and other rich phases, once;
oddly quilted commotion
she feels skinned without.
What is survival
but a magician’s quick mirror, the magician
of second-hand sleeves,
canned applause.
I am joyful, my love.
It is not joy that keeps him here,
her needy,
ravenous plump puppy:
full as a tick, he drops
off—sobbing.
Famished baby, careless,
carnivorous boy, greedy daddy:
I can’t fill your twisted spoon.
O my hunger, my hunger…
Swift as a suicide, it’s finished
with a groan round as the O in the mute, fat
moon.
Alone with empty bottles and chicken bones, she
watches
February’s blue dawn test
her painted toes; tonight
she believes she’ll start with
soup.