An Endless Hunger

In a geometry private as an animal’s

birth or death, I hold the trotter, a word—

a more sympathetic signifier

for a pig’s foot. I have never eaten

pig. Excuse me, pork. Each sign is a violence

muted, softened by nomenclature. I kiss

my cooking companion on the face, a real compañera

with daily bread in our mouths. Under stateless

stars, the outdoor kitchen stove breathes entrance

to another world. Food is a way

of resecrution. We speak of brown motherhood.

Blood makes embroidery patterns on tile.

The pozole and nihari recipes written in our palms.

I hold the limbs of the animal forbidden

by halal and kosher ancestors. Her body

smells of a distant ocean, bold turmeric

hennas my friend’s fingertips as they kite

around various spices to make blessings

into emperor's soup. The feral soul

of an animal prayed for with purpose.

The Nawabs, jeweled in power, at breakfast,

each sop of pruney fingers in soft marrow

of an animal’s end running

through hands and bread. Nihari (نهار)

from Arabic for morning, an aubade

of the body. We eat, again. Starving artists

dark bodied and blessed. She turns on the flame

for a pot just with chicken. Pozole was once made

of human flesh. We believe people are a type of maize,

she says lining hominy into a vertebrate.

Communion as simple as our metal spoon.

We always are eating

this Earth and life’s matter.

The roti and tostada as round

as a horse’s eye or the moon.

Our American laughing belly of land.

Come, endless hunger. In this devotion

there is an unyielding address to beauty.