Insatiable

by Laurel K. Dodge
MiPoesias
Honorable Mention, July 2007
Judged by Maurya Simon


The mackerel are as charred and flat
as the tomatoes are red and round.

There is magic in random numbers,
a message in the three dead fish

and the five fruit, ripe and grotesque.
A trinity of skeletons, and an uneven

yield, a harvest that keeps everything
off balance. The green tomato waiting

on the sill will not make a whole.
Even if you put a hand clear through,

you would not believe you’d seen the holy
ghost. Fork and knife suspended above

the heaping plateful of food; your belly
growls, but you cannot move. Later,

you’ll remember how the eyes stared
at you like god. How, in the distance,

the apocalypse burned. This is how
Lot’s wife felt just before she turned

around. Soles too blistered, too tired
to move the body forward. And a hunger

despite the plenty; an empty stomach,
a bereft vessel. A hole that could not be filled.