Empty Plate by Tom Zimmerman

So, all this feeding. Kisses come to mind.
And mouths have teeth. The vampire wakes,
and rouses with it appetites as old
as friends. A melody, or sacrifice
of self: the only things that make me cry.
So sadness, being beauty’s daughter, tells me
why I eat: to fatten on the world,
to hope that death just can’t cut through. Cold comfort,
waxen fruit heaped on a plate, the kind
of wax morticians use, the kind my mother
used to seal the jars of stewed tomatoes
every summer, suns I ate throughout
the long dark winters, fat along my frigid,
knife-thin edges thickening like snow.

About the Poet:

Thomas Zimmerman teaches English, directs the Writing Center, and edits The Big Windows Review at Washtenaw Community College, in Ann Arbor, Michigan. His poems have appeared recently in Everything in Aspic, Tigershark, and the anthology Nocturne: Poetry of the Night.