Baltimore: March 25, 1949
Clutching handfuls of steel-
cut oatmeal to ash she waits, famished
in a single stall
when the ice dealers open it
she gulps air and dashes out,
overturning
tubs of daffodils, hyacinth, lilac,
tearing through aisles of victuals and viands,
long hem dripping flames
lobsters death-whistle, boiling in their tanks
while pulled-taffy droops liquid, fresh-flaked
coconut snaps,
goose skin puckers, crisps, and she licks drippings
off her lips. Outside, twenty-four engines, six
ambulances,
in the nearby hospital ready to evacuate:
new mothers ginger with fresh stitches and
leaking nipples
while she pops unshucked oysters, deep-fries fresh
muskrat, incinerates crabcakes and, with
their wax paper
melted in her teeth,
slurps up the juice at the bottom
of a smoking oak pickle barrel.
