She reconstructs her ruptured orange peel
while telling me about the fancy meal
(such slick glass noodles, she could slip them down
without the use of teeth, and bloodless beets
no longer than a tea-fork’s tine; pellucid
silver wine; a piece of uncooked fish
in lemon sauce, so spare and colorless
it was completely imperceptible
against the platter’s ghostly porcelain,
and on her tongue it melted clear away—
she swallowed nothing). Pressed between her palms,
the bitter peel is seamless as shellac.
It’s empty and the orange won’t come back.
Julia Hungry
Hannah Louise Poston
Hannah Louise Poston is a poet and writer whose work has appeared in Ploughshares, Poetry Northwest, and The New York Times, among other places.