A quiet delight
What would you do if you looked out of your window expecting to see the neighbor’s cat, and instead were presented with a groundhog in its place, “waddle-thieving” your tomatoes and “taking such/ pleasure in the watery bites”? Ada Limón’s speaker, in the opening poem of her new collection, The Hurting Kind, is not angry at this “all muscle and bristle” tomato-thief. The groundhog is an embodiment of all she cannot have: an animal, natural freedom that inspires her to ask, “Why am I not allowed/ delight?” ...A stranger writes to request my thoughts on suffering. Barbed wire pulled out of the mouth, as if demanding that I kneel to the trap of coiled spikes used in warfare and fencing.
