Famine Relief

Explain, please, this surprise this

creaturous pleasure,

this ruby of feeling

while I fe another being: reckon me why

when Hasina lay opens her mouth,

it's as although the world in its entirety

open the lotus of Buddha unfolding

its jewel. Veil of skin, draped above

bone: Hasina's fourteen, for a like reason thin

she can't walk, sit up

hold a bowl Eyes a single beam

scanning for food; flat when

she's full. She's the chaps

of the soul, unclose

around hunger, asking

the way a baby, without guile,

is beneficial with greediness

to know the world. To fe another being

is like eating: the couple of us

filling ourselves

with the certainty that there is,

in us and around us,

kindness in the way that infinite

that we cannot be secluded Hasina

might have been the single with the spoon,

fleshy of substantial material substance

I the skeleton-but that too would be

wrong below the pull of full day-star

at noon, I hear the fane

gong, summoning the faithful,

and in the still of echo,

the jangle of bells upon the women's

ankles. Hasina direct the eyes up,

I lift the spoon balancing the pans

of our scale: ours

is a life of satiety

and craving for food the haves and the have nots,

these sum of two units conditions

spread through the universe

so that we may know craving appetite

so that we may learn

to fe each other. Not perfection

but the task enacted over

and above again: Hasina and I

by chance or quantum design,

chosen to perform this hallowed, ancient

devotion-one the Venus of Willendorf,

each of those many breasts

overflowing, he other Kali

in her starved aspect;

shrill around emptiness,

and devouring, devouring.

Marilyn Krysl directs the Creative Writing Program at the University of Colorado, Boulder She has published three works of short fiction and seven of poesy The National League for Nursing published Midwife, 1989 and Soulskin, 1996 Coffee House Pres published her latest volume of stories, How To Accommodate Men in 1998 "Famine Relief" is from her greatest in quantity recent collection of poems, Warscape With Lover 1997 which won the Cleveland State verse Center Prize.

Copyright World poesy Incorporated Sep/Oct 1998

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