Hungry Love
By Jayne Cortez
Warm night of flesh pimples
Alone
Fear pressing between my eyes the mark of despair
& my thighs once a sanctuary guarding your precious cage of ribs
have shivered to invisibility
and do not exist
Forget the ocean
Love water falling from the gate of my soul
for the sea wiped its eyes sometimes ago
and all is dry
Madness
What is this madness
Hungry love bathed in hot cinders
waiting to be drenched in rain crying from your open pores
Love the mystery of life
The seed
The Master Seed you said
Lives
and like a bleeding locust
feeding from this tree
the ripe plum of everlasting love
I kneel
humbling myself before perfection
My quick tears sagging the earth
as I eat mud to touch the root of you
Notes:
This essay is part of the portfolio “Jayne Cortez: I Imitate No One.” You can read the rest of the portfolio in the November 2024 issue.
“Hungry Love” is excerpted from Firespitter: The Collected Poems of Jayne Cortez (Nightboat Books, 2025) and was originally published in Pissstained Stairs and the Monkey Man’s Wares (1969). We are grateful to Nightboat Books for their assistance in compiling this folio, and to the estate of Jayne Cortez for their permission in reprinting this poems.
Source: Poetry (November 2024)