Elizabeth Gargano: Soup

That fall the hunger came upon her,
fierce and angry, a hunger for apples bubbling
in a cast-iron pan, tart, grainy with cinnamon,

for yams bursting out of their burnt skins
in black puddles of crusted sweetness
and all the other root vegetables that live

so long in the ground: parsnips like bleached
fingers, rutabagas flaunting splotchy indigo curves,
pickled burdock, brown and sweet as the earth,

blood-red radishes biting her tongue. That fall
the hunger came upon her after a long summer
of sipping tea and gelid broth, a July of scans,

an August of X-rays, her flesh newly transparent,
blue rivers of veins rising in her arms, hair sifting
away like sand in the wind, until there was nothing

to do but light the gas flame, peel away the rough
constricting skin, get out her knives and dice, dice, dice,
throw it all in the broth and stir the pot.

—

Copyright 2016 Elizabeth Gargano