Lynette Ng '93 majored in English and Psychology at Smith, has an MFA in Creative Writing from Mills College, and is completing a vocational degree in Culinary Arts with the New England Culinary Institute in Vermont. Her poems have been published in the Indiana Review, Indefinite Space, AGNI Online, DINER, Paper Street, and the Beloit Poetry Journal. She has lived most of her life in Malaysia, and will be doing a full-time internship with Smith's Dining Services department in the spring of 2008.

a hunger for something beyond the ordinary

Tonight she relies
almost entirely on the tomato.

Ruddy shape-shifter
riddled with seeds, it defies

biological limits and leaps
the terse distance between fruit and vegetable.

It succeeds because it is
indivisible; it thrives on its own

tart aroma. Vermilion
lengthens into translucence—

later, on a plate,
flagrant bits of orange

entangled in the angel hair.

Voracity exists.