A Woman Eats Dirt

Tharp 29 Peggy Tharp A Woman Eats Dirt Sometimes I stuff it like a dip of snuff between my lower lip and jaw, hold it there for hours. I savor the sharp slag edge of earth dug from the base of a pine. I tasted sumac tea once, a sorry substitute for sucking root, wrapping tongue around the hairy strand, pulling it out, grabbing crumbs of sod between lips. There is a way of knowing things, things that can't be learned except by putting them in your mouth; how to survive the burn of scorpion tail against the back of your throat. My mother learned to avoid what can't be absorbed through eyes and fingers. This, from a lifetime spent lifting things and looking underneath, to see and touch what lives between a rock and the ground slugs, wood lice, shiny black beetles with pincers that grab and squeeze the round, pink tip of tongue. ...