Ann Goldsmith is the author of four books of poems: NO ONE IS THE SAME AGAIN, which won a Quarterly Review of Literature international award in 1999; THE SPACES BETWEEN US, published by Outriders Poetry Project in 2003; THREE POEMS, a chapbook published by the University at Buffalo Poetry Collection in 2016, and WAITING AT THE TURN, awaiting publication. She also is featured in FOUR BUFFALO POETS, published in 2016 by Outriders Poetry Project. Her work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including, most recently, the Burchfield Penney Art Center’s MORTALS AND IMMORTALS, 2014; STEEL BELLOW, 2014; AN OUTRIDERS ANTHOLOGY, POETRY IN BUFFALO, 1969-1979; A CELEBRATION OF WESTERN NEW YORK POETS, 2014, and THE SOW’S EAR POETRY REVIEW, 2016.
This reading is free with gallery admission.
HUNGER
Last week, watching six passionate young actors
play all the roles in a stripped-down telling of Macbeth,
I saw how a starveling walked in the shoes of his craving
and observed in myself, as in him, a rage for more
fed by a great yawn of emptiness.
These days, my thoughts stalk the next meal,
like the uncle whose latter-day preoccupations
fastened on food. Especially well-larded meats.
So the lean and hungry younger poets
duke it out at the prize malls.
The gulf in my gut wants more than metaphor.
I want to feast on this flotilla of sailboats
flocking into the harbor as the setting sun
rubs apricot skins across the horizon
and a sudden breeze chops the water
into panes of stained glass—
while here on the boardwalk
a gull with missing wing, earthbound, raucous,
deftly captures a french fry with one foot.
Ann Goldsmith