Elisa Gabbert is the poetry editor of Absent and the author of The French Exit (Birds, LLC) and Thanks for Sending the Engine (Kitchen Press). Recent poems can be found in Denver Quarterly, The Laurel Review, Puerto del Sol, The Rumpus, and Salt Hill. She currently lives in Boston, works at a software startup, and blogs at The French Exit.
Rooney Kathleen Rooney is a founding editor of Rose Metal Press and the author, most recently, of the memoir Live Nude Girl: My Life as an Object (Arkansas, 2009)
and the essay collection For You, For You I Am Trilling These Songs (Counterpoint, 2010). With Elisa Gabbert, she is the co-author of the poetry collection That Tiny Insane Voluptuousness (Otoliths, 2008) and the chapbooks Don't ever stay the same; keep changing (Spooky Girlfriend Press, 2009) and Something Really Wonderful (dancing girl press, 2007).
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SOME NOTES ON HUNGER by Kathleen Rooney and Elisa Gabbert
As an adolescent, she found the emptiness of hunger at least as satisfying as eating.
Every major religion expects its adherents to fast. Low blood sugar can lead to syncope, hallucinations, which are open to (mis)interpretation.
This restaurant specializes in food that fascinates rather than satisfies.
As a metaphor, “hunger” only works for recurring desires.
She hungered for someone to characterize their lust for her in terms of hunger; You look luscious, sugar, she wished someone would say to her. Delicious, scrumptious: these hunger words felt so slushy.
Hunger can seem as daunting as a threat as when it’s a physical sensation. Some people fear hunger to the extent that they carry snacks everywhere.
The best hunger feels hollow like primordial darkness.
When you feel hungry in the afternoon, before heading to the kitchen, ask yourself if you're actually thirsty, tired, sad, or unsung.
Self-denial is a positive. Keep repeating that to yourself. Keep contemplating the tastes of things that have no taste, like bliss or loneliness.
It's not recognition I hunger for; it's connection. But then there’s bitterness. The storied “general malaise.”
Children whose mothers lived through a famine during their first trimester have a greater risk of becoming addicts later.
Tuberculosis, once known as "consumption," made emaciation glamorous. A collective neurosis?
No food truly has “negative calories.” Though chewing sugarless gum can count as exercise.
Vegetarians report frequent dreams about meat. Some people are never more relentless than when they are pursuing something “wrong.”
Is it obvious to say, what you dream about reminds you what you're not really getting.