How we cite our quotes: (Line)
Quote #1
Content in the tight hot cell of their hearts
To eat dusty bread. (3-4)
Look, we enjoy a dusty slice of sourdough as much as the next person—which is to say: yuck. The saddest part of these lines is not what's on the menu, though, but that women are "content" to be figuratively imprisoned in this fashion. One way to read this criticism is that the speaker is trying to wake women up to their realities, encouraging them to make a breakout.
Quote #2
They do not see cattle cropping red winter grass,
They do not hear
Snow water going down under culverts
Shallow and clear. (5-8)
The poem also describes a kind of sensory imprisonment, too. It's as though the cell described in line 3 has no windows, either. Women are trapped inside a dry and boring sense of their world.