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Becoming Full by Tess Satsuma
Becoming Full
by Tess Satsuma
You are most foolish when full.
Where once you fed on buttered bread
or plucked plum your mother’s flushed
palm seemed to bloom;
now your belly beams tuba bombs
after one “Meat Lovers” pizza for half-off.
HALF-OFF. Who would believe the miracle?
You do. You do because your river-mouth
gushes when meat and lover meet side-by-side.
You do because your new “Kenmore White”
refrigerator is pleased with its pregnancy
(to take a crumb would be abortive),
for the food there breathes beneath a stung and staring air:
five egg cartons, bald terracotta soldiers within,
their scrambled defeat your protein treat, and the tapioca pudding
fleet by the cheese ball collection stacked in pyramid form,
then your old frozen Queen: the whole chicken dream lodged
unseen in her cavernous ice-throne, and then the gallons
upon gallons of milk, an oceanic mass or contained tsunami perhaps.
The pizza guy (Karl) arrives,
gages in his ears growing more and more
empty each time he visits you and your ten-buck hunger.
His ears frame the sidewalk in a globe
as he walks away. You open the chili-pepper
packet and lick.
The chaotic ache is thrilling.
The parmesan, a wet snow, becoming
the yellowing plaster of your cheek’s blushing walls.
And the fridge again:
you undress before it, and gallon by gallon,
pour.