RockPaperPoem

 

Harvest

by Katie Olson Afshar

 

He chopped with a handmade santoku knife
           postured like a man guiding a dance partner,
           without force in his shoulders, pausing every so often
                      as if to let an onion contribute
                                 to its own disintegration.

Back then, I was the more accomplished one
           and as a way for him to be the teacher
                  he demonstrated how to brush-clean
                  chanterelles, breadcrumb squash blossoms
                                       dry-sauté shishitos.

I learned to love the vegetables he had traded for
           with other vendors at the Tuesday market
                    produce made cleaner by the absence of money
                         rootlets trembling with dirt and dew
                in the peak of a harvest lasting just one week.

l wanted this new food, not knowing exactly why
           and let myself get hungrier than before
        so when I did eat there was a meeting
        on the crest of sensation
   appetite having climbed far up one side
                   sustenance having climbed up the other.

We rode mountain ranges at the table.
           What I was becoming
                                             was exquisite
                 for hours the bright food still alive in my body.

Sometimes after a morning of selling bread
          he came home cradling a dozen oysters
         or hugging a pastured flank of lamb like a newborn
                   wide hands around the wax paper
                   what they handled became almost precious.

Fat simmered for hours that September
           tomato and cinnamon, hunger expanding
                           like vapor in an anvil.

                       I let myself get hungry
                                and I stayed away from him
                              in order to savor him,

                              In order to save myself.


Katie Olson Afshar is a writer and a pediatrician with a deep love for the human body, but conflicted feelings about modern medicine. Her work has appeared in The Sun, Catamaran and Hunger Mountain, among other journals. She lives in the California Bay Area with her husband and daughter.


 

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