Hunger

Take this phone face down in its cradle,

the woman there awakened by the bell

that never rings, that sleeps on the table

without the man who broke things off, who calls

hope to bare the beaten slab below.

Or the punished mirror in her trash bin.

Take the stars of every glass she throws

to fate. And so the hour she cannot burn

her hoard of letters but thinks instead of how,

yes, she will buy a dog, something to find

her here this side of the living, for now

there will be another mouth to feed.

And feed it she does: her bones, her hands,

the chest of every pounding door. With each bite,

each morsel of meat she dangles overhead,

there is always a leaping heart to snap it.

And while the dog bears the name of her ex,

she admits nothing, and in weeks to come

he doubles his size, his appetite, the flexing

of her bed, his cry for more blood, more crumbs,

more hide to chew, more squirrels to scatter

with his jaw. For what she does is never

enough to settle the matter, whatever matter

that is, never the thing to douse the fever,

though she cannot give him up, any more

than sacrifice the world they eat. She knows

that now, knows there are nights so mired

in stars and hunger she takes to heart, who’s

to tell him no, no. And the whole yard stirs

to see her bent beneath the day’s fatigue,

a broken gate beside them, her whispering

tenderly into his eyes: bad dog, bad dog.