Icebox

My refrigerator is full
of the desiccated corpses
of ginger roots, greens
dissolving into pools
of browns, sour cream
growing something
medicinal. Drawers
open to cankered citrus,
grapes half-way to raisins,
exotic fruits looking more
exotic, though less edible,
than when they arrived.
The mushrooms grow fungus
on top of fungus. Even
root vegetables are
powerless against me:
carrots swoon and potatoes
wave waxy new appendages.
Every victim of my neglect
a dream meal deferred:
boeuf bourguignon, coq
au vin, risotto, stir fry,
pasta primavera, duck
a l’orange. Every desecrated
fruit and flower and root
a dinner for two that refused
to be dinner for one.


by K. T. Landon

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K. T. Landon is currently studying in the MFA in Writing program at Vermont College of Fine Arts. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Arts & Letters PRIME, Ibbetson Street, CALYX, and The Examined Life. Claudia Emerson selected her poem, "Waning Crescent," as the third place winner in Fugue’s 2013 Poetry Contest, and her essay, "Turf War," was nominated for a Pushcart Prize by The Journal. She works as a software engineering manager at a research institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts.