I was the hungrier of the two.
We found something to eat, something to wear
over our ragged coats.
She fed again.
She grew in muscle, she grew
in faith.
I got hungrier and hungrier.
I chewed the trees like bones, I ate their meat.
She forgot me, she let me go.
Out of the water comes something to eat.
Out of the strong, something sweet.
~ Aditi Machado
Aditi Machado’s poems have appeared in The Iowa Review, The New England Review, LIES/ISLE, High Chair, and elsewhere. Her chapbook ‘The Robing of the Bride’ appears from Dzanc Books (2013). She is the Poetry Editor at Asymptote Journal. She is from Bangalore, India, but currently lives in Denver, USA.
Editor’s note: The poem’s title is taken from a line in The Hawk in the Rain by Ted Hughes (Faber & Faber, 1957). The final couplet condenses Judges 14: 14.
‘Two Wolves, Come Separately to a Wood’ appears in Aditi Machado’s first chapbook, ‘The Robing of the Bride’ (Dzanc Books). Reprinted here with kind permission of the poet.