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Issue 75
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Editor's Note
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POETRY
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FICTION
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ESSAY
Issue > Poetry
The Scullery Maid's Love Song to Potato Peels
Placid on the counter you wait,
you love-locks of babies' hair,
for something else to do;
shorn eyebrows
of old potatoes that fattened
this one on its back,
that one against a stone,
this one nicked by hoe,
that one smooth as bone
plumply nude beside you.
O dark odor of root and worm,
of tramps in rain and the mud;
O tattered jackets of Ireland's poor,
the base food of the mad;
O Druid rune curled
tongue to tail,
O womb of fiber and starch,
doomed for scullery bins—
O calm of duties done,
my pretties,
O end, my pretties,
of duties.