Castagnaccio, by Gillian Cummings

Penitent Magdalene, by Donatello (Italy) 1453-1455. I, Sailko, CC BY-SA 3.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

Castagnaccio
 
What she would have given 
for a slice of this cake, for a God 
who meant pleasure as redemption.
 
A simple dessert: chestnut flour, olive oil, 
a sprig of rosemary, some soaked raisins,
things peasants could readily find in famine,
 
born from those bread trees gone golden
in October, dropping smooth brown stones 
in spiky sheaths, a plenitude in scarcity, 
 
as if wood stoves of Tuscan winters spoke 
of hard snows to come. Gaunt figures
gathering what scant gifts fall to ground.
 
I think of Donatello’s Penitent Magdalene, 
palms pressed in prayer, dress of rags 
shredded by the sculptor’s knife, how 
 
she does not to want to be seen, her eyes 
as sad as… no, no, that’s not it. She needs 
her hunger. It burns through her.  

Gillian Cummings

Gillian Cummings is the author of The Owl Was a Baker’s Daughter, winner of the 2018 Colorado Prize for Poetry, and My Dim Aviary, winner of the 2015 Hudson Prize from Black Lawrence Press. Her most recent chapbook is The Shy Yellow (Dharma Pine Editions, 2023), a letterpress edition of twenty copies. Her poems have appeared in The Cimarron Review, The Colorado Review, Denver Quarterly, Tupelo Quarterly, and in other journals. She lives in Catskill, New York with her husband and parrot.