Poem 455

The queen of Anorexia, wherever that might be … taking a perverse pride in self control … I guess the ambulance comes from the one that when I was a teen would pick up and drop off our emaciated neighbour for cancer treatment …

( I like the images of the external world seeming to reject or become hostile to her when the reality is no doubt the opposite … the starvation images of stilt/insect women with clipped faces, hips and pelvis that jut out making their laps convex rather than concave … )

queen

when cars couldn't bear you
phones snaked out of your grasp
when birds picked away the ceiling
and the mower started by itself
      raging behind the roller door
you decided to die
of being thin

outside an ambulance goes back and forth
you hold your breath
all over the neighbourhood it picks up thin women
stilt women
insect women
their clipped faces peer from its windows
hands in the bony convex of their laps
backs straight

but not as straight as yours