Hannah Louise Poston

Two poems from Hannah Louise Poston’s Julia Hungry

followed by a note on the author

Julia Hungry

She reconstructs her ruptured orange peel
while telling me about the fancy meal
(such slick glass noodles, she could slip them down
without the use of teeth, and bloodless beets
no longer than a tea-fork’s tine, pellucid
silver wine, a piece of uncooked fish
in lemon sauce, so spare and colorless
it was completely imperceptible
against the platter’s ghostly porcelain,
and on her tongue it melted clear away—
she swallowed nothing). Pressed between her palms,
the bitter peel is seamless as shellac.
It’s empty and the orange won’t come back.

Hannah Louise Poston

 

In the Kitchen

in the kitchen it smells like old pears
as if a thumb pressed gently on the surface of the air
would poke a fissure through to warm rot

it seems the year is all sockets of rot
the kitchen smells like tinny pots
and time is an old fork and an old knife

the empty fridge is full of vacant stares
the kitchen piled high with old pots
and rusted pans        with circles stacked on squares

and time is falling down the stairs
the kitchen clock is mounted on the air
as if the kitchen walls are barely there

and time is a pear full of soft spots
the knives and forks are scattered there
as if awaiting routine repairs

and time is not        and time is not
the kitchen smells as if it wasn’t theirs
the rot smells like kitchen pears

and time is sitting quietly in chairs
the kitchen isn’t there        or isn’t theirs
or if the kitchen is        then they are not

 

Hannah Louise Poston

 

Hannah Louise Poston is a poet, essayist, and online content creator whose writing has appeared in several places, including Poetry Daily, Longreads, and The New York Times. She has an MFA in poetry from the University of Michigan and a BFA from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, which she attended as the Thomas Wolfe Scholar in Creative Writing. Hannah has taught poetry and writing as the Writer-in-Residence at St. Albans School, at The Pennsylvania Governor’s School of the Arts, and at the University of Michigan, and she has taught Argentine tango in studios all over the country. For work she reviews makeup on YouTube and writes grants for climate activists. She is from the mountains of North Carolina and she currently lives in Maryland.