Hunger.

by Margeaux Temeltas

Chicago, October 2008
Dedicated to the 300

hunger spits on poetry

living as it does in the gut of the world,
in the gut of the world’s forgotten,
an ache that gnaws on displaced dreams,
howling, huge and empty,
eating everything _____ but itself.

hunger binds the blind and the forgotten
hunger thrives on blindness,
as in a blackly yawning alleyway
cracked streetlights glitter like a crooked grin,
lonesome for beauty.

only the blind see __an empty alley.

look._____________ inside empty,
hunger is a small boy crouched,
useless as a diamond,
his inconsolable bones digging into the moon.

for, yes— _________ even the hungry can see the moon.

that’s the oilslick glint in his inkblack eyes,
the light shivering now as the boy
gathers the dust of his hunger
into words, _________where,
discovered on a page,
hunger becomes beautiful.

because hunger?
hunger spits poetry.

_______________


from a prompt during after-school poetry club,
to be performed Friday, April 17th, 2009
at the Orr Academy High School Talent Show

Photo by Margeaux Temeltas
Midwinter Swimming Pool, Pulaski Park
Chicago 2008