Two Old People Eating Soup, by ​Garrett Phelan

Two Old People Eating Soup, by Francisco Goya (Spain). 1819-1823.

Two Old People Eating Soup

The old woman’s brittle hand churns
the spoon in a bowl of soup,
the other bone-aching hand points.
 
From out of her heavy draped
clothes under her shawl
a toothless grimace cracks,
 
“Look, there, remember?”
 
Her dog-snouted husband,
mugged by age quivers
a cramped arm
clamped to the body,
hand hardly a gesture
propped up by the table,
 
eyes black holes
that can scarcely see.
                       
“No,” he croaks.
 
The faces lit from the direction
their crooked fingers aim.

They feel the black grease
cling to them in their black room,
they continue to eat-
a toothless sucking, a slight stirring.

Garrett Phelan

​Garrett Phelan is the author of the poetry book Outlaw Odes (Antrim House 2015) and  micro-chapbooks Unfixed Marks  and Standing where I am (Origami Poetry Project 2014 and 2016).His poems have appeared in a variety of publications including English Journal, Potomac Review, Word Riot, Off the Coast and the anthology Poetic Art 2010 (Workhouse Arts Center).  He presently teaches poetry in a Connecticut prison.