The Modern Wendigo by Nick Trelstad

In the fruit bowl
on the table, an orange
is doing everything

except eating itself,
but the thin, shiny
flesh still begs

to be peeled.
Like now,
he is chewing

his fingernails
at the kitchen table
while she

sucks gleefully
at the small blood bubbles
on her pin-pricked fingertip.

That’s not to say
we crave our own
consumption,

but there is an ache
like the old gods
of famine who dwell

in our guts and
demand fresh
flesh and blood.

Like the eagle
on the side
of the road

feasting
on the still
warm carcass

of another eagle,
we are hungry
for ourselves.