“Starvation Peak” by Susannah Winters Simpson

Starvation Peak

It was under the shadow of Starvation Peak she started shoving white flour tortillas into her mouth while he slept. Her hot head pressed against the refrigerator. He would fry onions and potatoes in bacon lard, and she ate them. She was starving, except she wasn’t. He was shrinking behind napalm and Agent Orange and defoliation and sniper fire, except he wasn’t. He said she had gotten as big as a house, except she hadn’t. The neighbors would shoot the leg off their dog for chasing cows, except he didn’t. She sewed and painted and pined for green, for water, for the wind to stop. As he slept and snored, she lay awake and stared at the cobwebbed vigas and circles of tin-can tops nailed across ceiling knotholes. While she worked, he smoked and stared and fished and filled the freezer with trout she wouldn’t eat. At The Rialto, she ordered chicharrónes and sopapillas in honey and gulped them down to the dead place, to fill the circular spinning black hole, except it never did. He rode off on a Gold Wing motorcycle to find himself, except he never would.

Susannah winters simpson

Susannah Winters Simpson’s work has been published in North American Review, Potomac, Wisconsin Review, South Carolina Review, POET, Nimrod International, Poet Lore, Salamander, Sequestrum, South Florida Poetry Journal, SWWIM, and Xavier Review, among others. Her book, Geography of Love & Exile, was published by Cervená Barva Press. Her manuscript Mother Wind is forthcoming in 2024 by Pine Row Press and Dharma of Death & Desire by Shanti Arts Press in 2025. She is the founder and co-director of the Performance Poets of the Palm Beaches.

Headshot: Monique De Winters

Photo Credit: Staff