Teach Me Hunger

by TONI LA REE BENNETT

Teach me hunger—

make me salivate
graze my lips with sustenance
then take it away

starve me lean
like a winter-famished wolf

make a hole in my belly
that only you can fill

put a crust of bread in a gaunt hand
then snatch it away

tease me with
grapes just out of reach

then be my all-you-can-eat buffet
feed me till I get so round
you can roll me down the street
make every day
a tiny tim xmas goose day

then starve me and
teach me hunger.

Toni La Ree Bennett’s verbal and visual work has appeared in Cimarron Review, Gold Man Review, Gravel, Poemmemoirstory, Puerto del Sol, Hawaii Pacific Review, december, and Memoir with a poetry chapbook to be published by Finishing Line Press in February 2019. She is also a photographer and lives with a flock of feisty finches. Photography and writing samples can be seen at tonibennett.com.