Content Warning: This is a story about a dark abusive situation and two children in danger. It comes from a horror manuscript I’m writing called Crow Carriage. I chose to include this poem in Headline Poets because it is a moment when an impoverished, starved, abused character looks beyond her own plight and helps someone else. It’s a poem about not being complicit in abuse, but it does contain references to abuse so please be aware of that before reading.
Hollow
Ravenous, autumn your mother would leave,
a hollow intestine growls animal
need. Grief a murmur you faintly perceive
between hole in your center, mandible
father won’t feed. Scavenge for morsels while
he climbs into a hole. Ladder lowered
when he craves control. Dregs, stirabout, vile,
his cracked porridge bowl, you will devour,
more fortunate soul than girl you now hear,
screams of a stomach disappeared. Full
this moment, some sustenance, plan is clear.
Peer into his hollow. Ladder, you pull,
race for aid, limbs fueled on leftover gruel —
not everyone hollow needs to be cruel.
Image: Amy Alexander
Author’s Note: This sonnet “Hollow” is about the abysmal beginnings of a character in Crow Carriage called the Mistress of Malice. She is abandoned by her mother to a father who has lost everything and is both incredibly depressed and evil. In a previous poem, “Hole”, you can read here in “Rogue Agent Journal , we are introduced to his character who, in better times, had begun digging a pond but abandoned the project and it has become a hazardous “Hole,” also a trap for children, or at least one.
In “Hollow,” we observe a young, neglected, abused girl come to understand that someone is suffering worse than her — this girl in the hole and decide to do something about it. She removes a ladder and traps her father while he inside his Hole and runs for help. This decision will remove her from his control and find her ferried to wealthier relatives. Unfortunately, for the Mistress of Malice, she will find that not all hollow people are starving and poor.
You can read more about this project, being published next year by The Hedgehog Poetry Press, at its project page here
on kristingarth.com.
