Hunger

By SM Stubbs

A man storms into a house
near the Gulf Coast of Florida.
It’s mid-afternoon late in summer,  
he’s distraught, weeping. A woman
in rubber gloves up to her elbows
stands at the sink, feels pain deep
in her chest. She had visions like this
when she was a girl. Those ended
in a field of pews beaded with rain
as if the church they’d peopled
disintegrated around them. She doesn’t
fear the man because she has seen
how it ends. He crashes against walls
and collapses by the kitchen table.
His legs knock over chairs, threaten
a half-assembled puzzle. She fills a glass
with water, sets it on the floor.
Thunder ricochets in the distance.
His agonies bleed into the air the way
heat hovers over asphalt. For a moment
she wants to match his pain, wants to
set fire to the curtains and carpet 
to see which of them Heaven
gathers home first. When it comes
the storm is sudden. Raindrops smack
against the roof like hymnals
dropped from a plane.

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SM Stubbs lives in Brooklyn. Recipient of a scholarship to Bread Loaf; nominated for the Pushcart and Best New Poets. His work has appeared in Poetry Northwest, Puerto del Sol, New Ohio Review, Crab Creek Review, December, Iron Horse Literary Review and The Rumpus, among others.