SoMa Literary Review - I Am Too Hungry

I Am Too Hungry

By Jenna Humphrey

I keep telling myself
That one of these men
I bring to my bed at night
Will taste good enough
To keep me full forever
But instead I wake up
With heart burn, hunger pangs,
The shakes
So I call up another man
He who peddles the big lie
In little baggies
Wishing afterwards
That we could take the pieces of straws
We use to put holes in our brains
You and I
And make of them
One long wire
To suck out the acid in our chests
Instead I put them down the garbage chute
Along with bloody tissues,
Empty bottles, used condoms,
Napkins scribbled upon with bad poetry
And the homeless overwhelm me sometimes
Rifling through their bins
For somebody else's leftovers
We build bridges, dams, artificial lakes
To harness water that thrashes and wails
Like those who are paid to mourn
We build these things because of that other lie
The one about progress
Nothing feeds me like the ocean
Walking on sand
The beach I shared with no one
But I am trapped in this city
A desert riddled with mirage
I would like to meditate
On that thing Thoreau wrote
When he was alone in the woods
That thing about making your life
Into a counter friction
To stop the machine
But I am too hungry
And my cell phone is too full of names

Also by Jenna Humphrey on SoMa Literary Review: Even Hollowed & Tender

Jenna Humphrey lives in the Western Addition and works the graveyard shift as an innkeeper. Dave Eggers once drew a gopher in her journal. Her work has been published in this magazine, Haight Ashbury Literary Journal, The Lemming (which she co-founded), Igloo Magazine, New York to London, VegNews Magazine, Meadow, and is forthcoming in 5_Trope.