The BlueIris Semi-Nightly Poem Thread, 9/6/07

[BlueIris]

"Anorexic"

Flesh is heretic.
My body is a witch.
I am burning it.

Yes I am torching
her curves and paps and wiles.
They scorch my self denials.

How she meshed my head
in the half-truths
of her fevers

till I renounced
milk and honey
and the taste of lunch.

I vomited
her hungers.
Now the bitch is burning.

I am starved and curveless.
I am skin and bone.
She has learned her lesson.

Thin as a rib
I turn in my sleep.
My dreams probe

a claustrophobia
a sensuous enclosure.
How warm it was and wide

once by a warm drum,
once by the song of his breath
and in his sleeping side.

Only a little more,
only a few more days
sinless, foodless,

I will slip
back into him again
as if I had never been away.

Caged so
I will grow
angular and holy

past pain,
keeping his heart
such company

as will make me forget
in a small space
the fall

into forked dark,
into python needs
heaving to hips and breasts
and lips and heat
and sweat and fat and greed.

—Eavan Boland

[BlueIris]

1. Kick.

[BlueIris]

2. I'm going to take a shower now. And when I get back, I hope this has some comments.

[ThomCat]

3. This is a very ugly poem, but in a good way.

It's disturbing to think that anyone thinks this way about their body. Or in the case of the author, probably used to think that way. I hope Eavan Boland is in recovery. :(

[BlueIris]

5. I'm reasonably certain this is a persona poem. Eavan Boland isn't the speaker,

the one whose voice creates the person speaking of her experiences as an anorexic, just the author who imagined those experiences for that persona.

[wildhorses]

4. one can not hold back the hands of time.

not without paying dearly.

the cost is high.

father time demands retribution.

[BlueIris]

6. Kick.

[BlueIris]

7. Kick.

[RetroLounge]

8. Wow...

Just, wow...

:hi:

RL

[BlueIris]

9. Isn't this amazing? So much agony in so few lines, such a tiny form.

Very few poets can structure their poems in a way that enhances their themes without succumbing to triteness, but this author pulled it off.

[BlueIris]

10. Kick.

[AnotherGreenWorld]

11. I dislike it.

[BlueIris]

12. Neat! Thanks for sharing!

[Callalily]

13. Succinctly states how

most girls/women feel about their bodies at one point in their life or another. :cry:

[BlueIris]

14. ...egh.