Denise Jarrott: When I Am Hungry

Photo: Joanna C. Valente

AUTOMAT
(KETCHUP SOUP)

Someday I want to say that I was so poor
when I moved here. Someday I want to come home
with my paper bags full of the most beautiful jewel tomatoes,
bufala cheese, and crusty bread, a green vessel
containing lovingly fermented dark vinegar,
and I will arrange it all on a plate with a quirky motif, I will take
a photo, and I will not think to cherish such things. I was so poor
I’ll say, and now I am comfortable. I’ll put up
my feet. I’ll eat
when I am hungry. It is only fair to my future self
to forget the bathtub full of clothes. The stain
wouldn’t come out. The speckled red walls, hot water
and instant coffee, oh I remember
but I’m no longer there. Take me somewhere
where I am not alone. Was it worth
what you did not spend? Do you feel, at last,
clean enough to eat?

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Denise Jarrott is the author of NYMPH (Vegetarian Alcoholic Press, 2018) and two chapbooks, Nine Elegies (Dancing Girl Press) and Herbarium (Sorority Mansion). Her poetry and essays have appeared in Zone 3, The Boiler, Queen Mob's Teahouse, Cover, Luna Luna and elsewhere. She is currently at work on a series of essays in conversation with Roland Barthes' A Lover's Discourse. She grew up in Iowa and lives in Brooklyn.