Zachary Bush

ALL HUNGER IS SILENT


Morning’s sky is colored with eleven shades of red light,
Leaking out from the lace of the lavender haze,
Staining all the dew of the treetops that border this stream
Where a boy sits, listening to the sounds of beavers’ teeth
In construction upstream, gnawing through a soggy cypress trunk,
Until the crunching stops suddenly, and the slender tree topples over,
Slapping the belly of a dam. Waves ripple downstream.
Out of the corner of the boy’s eye emerges a water moccasin. He studies
The snake’s spin--an infinite circle on the ribbed surface of the stream.

Zachary C. Bush (b. 1983) is the author of The Silence of Sickness (Gold Wake Press, 2010), At Swan Decapitation (VOX Press, 2010), and Angles of Disorder (BlazeVOX, 2009), plus nine chapbooks of poetry. In May, Bush will graduate with an MFA in Poetry from the City College of New York. He teaches World Literature and Writing. He lives in Jersey City with his girlfriend. "All Hunger is Silent" first appeared in SPIN (2008), a chapbook published by Kendra Steiner Editions.