turbine 03
 
 
  
 
Turbine 03
Poetry
Hinemoana Baker
James Brown
Kate Camp (audio)
Megan Dunn
Jane England
Ian Finch
Ingrid Horrocks
Chris House
Anna Jackson
Tim Jones
Laura Kroetsch
Kirsten McDougall (audio)
Mary Macpherson
Rick Moody
Naomi O’Connor
Esther Quin
Rossella Riccobono (audio)
Virginia Were
Louise Wrightson
Interview
Memoir
Letter From Iowa
Fiction
  

Ingrid Horrocks

Work by this Author:
   Hunger
   Now Suddenly

Hunger

Upstate New York

Light approaches the field.
In the dewy silence the woman

Is waking from dreams and leaving the cabin.
Drinking coffee, she picks up her knife

And looks across the lines of arugula, cabbages,
Broccoli. This morning she eats no food.

She moves towards the lines of vegetables
She planted, distinct now in the morning field,

And bends to slice the stems of cabbages.
I came because there is magic, the woman

Reminds herself, in something this good cut by the knife
In one’s hand. Beside her the cabin

Is quiet on the lip of the hill—her cabin
Sheltered by trees dug in with the first crops.

When she came with her books and her gardening knife
Living here and tending this field

Was the most important thing the woman
Could imagine. She planted butterhead cabbages.

Now she strokes the heads of cabbages
With warming fingers while the cabin

Watches. It has been days since the woman
Had visitors to share her food,

To see the sprouts of carrots changing in the field,
The basil calling for water against the bright knife

Light. People to tell. She catches her finger on the knife
As she packs up delicate white cauliflowers and cabbages—

Boston is too far away from this field,
She thinks. But the boxes wait by the vigilant cabin.

The supply truck comes from the city for the week’s food.
The driver pauses briefly to talk to the woman

Before driving into the dust. And the woman
Works on in zigzags, till darkness falls like a knife

Into the valley. And then, among her plots of food,
The woman talks: Coriander and dandelion, kale and cabbages.

She reaches the steps of the cabin.
She does not go in but stands on in her field.

It is no longer food I am hungry for, thinks the woman,
The dark field grows thin as a knife,
Heads of cabbages rock beside the shrinking cabin.

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