« Taylor Graham » ANOTHER HUNGER-ARTIST You ate your fingers, they were easy, finger-food. Of course, that made it a bit tricky to manage a plate of hors d’oeuvres, hard to not look common, face-down in a bowl of consomme. But you got better at it. You ate your toes, peeling off the heels and nylons, then the nails. Knucklebones, the dainty ankles. You memorized anatomy as you consumed it. You could pass the butcher without asking the price of pork loin or a rack of lamb. Brown-eyed beef might wink itself bloody. Chicken was a pimpled horror. Etiquette, your mother used to say. She raised you to exquisite taste. It was only yourself you ate. SISTERS Behind the bedroom door they talk, Sarah and the one she calls Samantha. They growl and grumble as if they spoke the same language. But one of them came fully formed on four good limbs, and furry; the other, two stubs plus a fist plus what science could do about the rest. Sarah has a cleft palate for English; Samantha, a deft tongue for leftovers from the hand. Both have learned to bark. They share four eyes (all brown), four nostrils in dissimilar noses. Together, they keep a slyness behind the bedroom door, while we, outside, pray that such sisterhood could heal, that Sarah come out whole while the beast Samantha drags its crippled self away. But sisters know better. DEAR, Sorry this postcard comes so late. But the lake’s still there. On the left, behind spreading jacarandas, the place I meant to lease, 2nd floor balcony. Imagine gazing out over leafy purple clouds, with the taste of Keats in your mouth. We’d toast the sunset with a blush-white wine, and Ravel on the stereo. In the end, I took an efficiency with indoor-outdoor carpet in a rundown neighborhood off campus. The hallway smelled of cabbage. I just happened on this card in a box of papers from back then. I lost your address. But only years after you lost mine. Love, Taylor Graham is a volunteer search-and-rescue dog handler in the Sierra Nevada, she also helps her husband (a retired wildlife biologist) with his field projects. Her poems have appeared in Grand Street, The Iowa Review, The New York Quarterly, Poetry International, and elsewhere. She is also included in the new anthology, California Poetry: From the Gold Rush to the Present (Santa Clara University, 2004).