Beets
Kristin Zimet /
My cottage window scarred with frost
is thin as powdered milk that fills a glass;
but not my see-through Magda, burying
her hunger in my skirt. She won’t
hold her rag baby up to the weak light,
to watch the blank shred into snow.
She wants back in, more than lap deep,
where the root twisted and pulsed
between us. I long for my own breast
tight to bursting, her tongue’s tug,
the hot flood in answer. For a year
I was earth enough to feed on.
Leaning over her in a half arch
that aches my back, I scrub the mud
off these poor rat-tailed knobs
from the root cellar. Ground
is a sealed coffin, and we sleep
cold. Beets must pull us through
Kristin Zimet is the editor
of The Sow’s Ear Poetry
Review and the author of a
full-length poetry collection,
Take in My Arms the Dark.
Her poems are in Poet Lore,
Salt Hill, Natural Bridge
and many other journals.
She performs poetry in
places from concert hall to
arboretum.
With a coarse brush, I rouse their
sleeping heat. Yevgeny rubbed me so,
my skin raw with blood, his cheeks
ruddy with drink and pushing. Then
I could not wash him off. Brown
water flushes pink, splashes purple.