“BODY: If we knew how our body is made,
           we wouldn’t dare move.”
                  —Flaubert

We’ll combust. Faintness creeps like a pang
an ingrown toenail—drift: my tummy… And you
standing still, staring at produce like a thigh. Grumbling,
our burn—sweating at cornucopia, hot river gods—
peanut butter’s goo and nut meat, warm:
texture of the womb—pastas well cooked
given under unwise teeth, pleasing—iced cream,
salt on pretzels, slight burn, throat’s dumbshow
its physicality—consumption, a lunged gulp.
Hunger at the hardness of a fresh pepper, red and
like you. Meat’s sponge and animal dung appeal:
also warmth, organ meat’s scented faint piss—
animals, burned to our burn: chewing and alive…

Like all gluttony it is only the indirect flare of desire
to have the world reduced to a few monumental objects:
a mountain, a bowl of beans, a truck, you my dear, and my mouth.


Daniel Horowitz is The Inquisitive Eater's Poet of the Month for January 2018.

Daniel Horowitz is a farmer, teacher and writer from New York City. His heart lives in New Orleans, where the swamp of dreams speaks in the burst bubbles of an alligator’s last breath. Meanwhile, he pursues his MFA in Creative Writing from the New School and learns from children in Brooklyn Public Schools what the trees say in Prospect Park. His chapbooks, Chorus: A Poem for Voices and becuz can be found on Amazon.com (and if you ask him), learn more on his website lettersandessays.com, send cash not gifts.

Featured image: “The Couple,” by Karl Kasten.

Comments are closed.