Hunger | 27.2

2004

Digital only; out of stock in print.

Food is the main ingredient in many poems and stories in this issue of Room of One’s Own. Tanya Bellehumeur-Allatt’s three-part poem “Orchard” conjures up seasonal pagan rituals, when faith in the earth’s renewal was expressed in feasts and sexual orgies. The fruit trees, or “Babylonian courtesans,” in Allatt’s orchard get pregnant and become mothers “dripping with fruit.” The woman in Vivian Hansen’s poem “Ants on Avocadoes” is the avocado and her married lover the ant. Consumption becomes serious in Amanda Hale’s “The Sin Eater,” in which we are called to witness the life of a woman who slowly “starved to death with a full belly. On the lighter side, Helen Kitson’s short story brings us a day in the life of artist Suzanne Valadon, mother of Maurice Utrillo, and the first woman to be admitted to the Societé Nationale des Beaux-Arts. Valadon was known for painting beautiful nudes, for wearing a “corsage of carrots,” and for feeding the paintings she didn’t like to her pet goat. There are many other delectable morsels in issue 27.2 of Room. There is a well-blended quality to this issue,and I urge to you read all of the stories and poems and to feast your eyes on the artwork by Marven Donati and Katelan V. Foisey. Bon appétit!