Assistant Editor Holli Carrell: Winshen Liu’s breathtaking poem “Lunch Break” interrogates hunger and our shared human need for sustenance, both through food and art. With a skillful, nuanced, and impressive execution of rhyming patterns, “Lunch Break” challenges readers to savor the beauty surrounding us in our daily lives and environments.
Listen to “Lunch Break”:
Lunch Break
I roam the aisles at the fancy food store,
through isles of citrus and berries and grapes,
my mouth a desert, desirous of shapes
like whispered kisses to one I adore.
The fig displays, overflowing, arrest
my gaze: I freeze while my eyelashes paint
in air a still-life impression, a faint
maroon beneath the green, Mission, Celeste.
The painting dries and my gaze is released.
I pick one up and behold its wee cheek.
A pinch, a squeeze, how I’d love to just sneak
a palmful home as a poor woman’s feast.
Winshen Liu is a writer from Illinois, currently pursuing an MFA at the University of Mississippi. Her poems have since appeared or are forthcoming in december, Gordon Square Review, The Malahat Review, Frontier Poetry, The Rumpus, and Southeast Review, among others.
