by Sonia Greenfield

If you listen close
To the shell-shaped cookie
You can hear the ocean

And the sea’s fortune speaks:
You will never know hunger.
As if it were simply enzymatic

To digest this idea.
As simple as bread in mouth
To quiet the din

Of organs consuming organs.
The noise cries up
From my belly

Even after the food gets eaten,
Because appetite does not succumb
To matters of meat.

Take for example
The flesh loneliness
Of a room solely occupied.

This crumb and water subsistence of one.
A crash diet; the sense of shrinking;
A body starved for attention,

Until we feed and give back
And feed again in the cyclical chain
Of pleasure.

As in the lover
Who consumes my orchard,
Heavy with bearing,

In exchange for his grain—
The field wide with the fury
Of a good growing year.