Jake Sheff
Feast:
My hunger is no method actor; love,
In the beginning, laid my hunger down
On mossy music. Days unworthy of
Her gaze are days no more. It all had grown
Around her: every step a grape, to drown
In wine that went with every kind of food;
Compared to non-existence, it was good.
Milk, honey, coffee, spices; all was in
Her custody. I saw, in living bronze,
The Dying Gaul stand up. If fall was in
The air, it failed. “She breathes, the moon responds,”
I noted; moonlight tasted of pecans
Back then. My health was none of love’s concern.
She taught a lesson no one wants to learn.
Famine:
The snow is too loud for my eyes, too hot
For hearts today. Her final breath was strange,
Was sweetly strange: (I wish that tongues forgot);
You’d swear that Doctor Lister kissed her. Change
Gets paid in salt, and that’s too bad: this range
Of possibilities is doggerel;
My memory spits it out, and says, “I’m full.”
These candles make the coldness only seem
Forgotten. Wisdom stands by Terminus
To worship God, while hunger forms a team
With The Night Watch. Imagine nothing is,
Then look again, and nothing doesn’t blaze!
A fork! A fork! My birthright just to spoon!
Let Typhoid Mary undercook the moon.
Feast:
Tomorrow love will feed the ocean; rain
And tears and nations always fall. The time
Will serve me empathy before a grain
Of self-awareness grows. Love’s paradigm
Will split in half to be my lemon-lime
Refreshment. She will slice what’s never old,
Turn every nugget in distress to gold.
Love’s light will still be very vertical.
Starvation is her lifeblood; I will fast
Until what’s never too available –
Her last forbidden fact – is my repast.
She’ll decorate the sky and flabbergast
The moon with darkling globes. Trifoliate
And pure, her rhythms will be trees of light.