Starved
by Arisa White
1.
She won’t let me in the kitchen. I scrape evidence of her bad cleaning into my fingernails. Cornbread on the left. Fried chicken on the right. In my pockets, my hands fist. She checks them now. She vacuums the corners and countertops. Takes to cutting my nails. There is nothing when she comes with clippers.
2.
the air thickens
when the sun comes hot
gravy thick
flecked with pepper
beef brown
pangs
rest quiet
The ice cream truck
can’t wake it.
3.
On her belly she rubs circles
the way I do at night,
to quiet the begging.
She is growing a child for herself;
it’s making her fat.
I pray for
its arms and legs;
the gristle of torso and head,
for my chest to grow
the baby's milk
from my breast, I suck.
4.
Spring and summer make the trees green
but it’s the fall when they’re ripe
5.
Down my throat, the ink is sauce;
the pen is plate for a patch of paint from behind the toilet.
From the hall chips of maple veneer splinters into toothpicks
A cumulus of cotton candy in the walls,
takes saliva from the next swallow;
turns hunger to sleep and my ear
to the innie recounts not one groan
I chase a pigeon into my hands.
We match in heart. The beat makes the thirst
for yellow forgotten. Feathers belly first, I break
no fruit similar to its pulp.
6.
Winter’s a clean plate
the plows reveal asphalt,
a stove’s insides blank.
7.
I’m practicing
to breathe my
smell to nothing.
My bones will faint
this house, my shoes
will empty.
Arisa White is a Cave Canem fellow, a native New Yorker, and a soon-to-be graduate from the MFA program at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. To make her mother proud, she's working on getting her first book of poetry published.