Poem by Chris Biles

The Full-Fridge Privilege
​
I saw a video
few months back
showing people ‘round the world in solitude
in quarantine.
A ballerina twirled fast and strong on carpet
a guitarist gave a concert to his devoted tabby cat
a painter threw blue at the canvas stretched across his wall
– each alone,
each living their own struggle, but –
each unified in their lonely humanity:
what a tear-jerker! Yes, yes that’s right,
we can all make it through – apart, yet still
together.
But: each
with a fridge –

each with a full fridge.

So much more to the story:
Bones
and skin and skin
and bones

a chasm between
living

and living hungry.

Puzzled in the attempt to quantify
the boundless emptiness that fills
a stomach pressing concave toward the spine –
the contradiction crowds out any concern for unity.
Seeing the beauty in a unified humanity:
that’s a full-fridge full-belly privilege.
For this vast world to be one
both pandemics must be undone.

Click on the file below to listen to Chris read her poem:

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Chris Biles currently lives and works in Washington D.C. She enjoys playing with the light and the dark, and losing herself in music, anything outside, and of course some words here and there. Chris has been published in Blueline Magazine, Signatures Lit and Arts Magazine, Words and Whispers, The Clementine Zine, Fleas on the Dog, FEED Lit Mag, and on SLiPNet. Find her at www.chrisbiles03.com / Instagram: @marks.in.the.sand

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