Gorged
- Gorged
Birds, eels, cheese in slabs high as a mortuary, mussels that are knuckles nearly, the grouper with its brain scooped out next to its eyes. You’re the cart and you’re piled, but when it comes to some meals I’m a hermit who dines on ice cubes— my empire’s gorged. Of course I’m not talking about dinner. I’m talking about philosophy. I can choose a reason to live from so many possibilities but partway through a course who doesn’t grow unsatisfied? Weren’t even our first mistakes copies of their original forms? Every time I swallow my philosophy hurts. [End Page 109]
Lee Upton’s most recent book is Swallowing the Sea: On Writing and Ambition, Boredom, Purity, and Secrecy, forthcoming from Tupelo Press in 2012. Her poetry has appeared most recently in Best American Poetry 2011 and the Literary Review. She is the writer-in-residence at Lafayette College.
