"How she meshed my head
in the half-truths
of her fevers
till I renounced
milk and honey
and the taste of lunch.”
- ‘Anorexic’, Eavan Boland
The pervasive pain of hunger
fastens my mind to flesh and blood.
Mindful, aware of each moment,
success in the heart’s slowing thud.
How she meshed my head.
She’s there in the space between thoughts
and then she speaks the thoughts herself.
She’s me but not me, voicing fears
and hidden threats, praising my health.
In the half-truths?
I could sense myself, an echo
mirrored in hatred and discord.
She was my safety, my comfort,
yet I feared the double-edged sword
of her fevers.
She whispered paradoxes, rules
that restrained my spiralling thoughts
with dialectics of control,
structured security of sorts
till I renounced
the chaos of my former life,
distilled through her inverted love.
Angles of detachment, senses
keen with hunger, nightmare dreams of
milk and honey.
I didn’t set out to lose. Just
knew that I didn’t want to gain.
My fears numbed in her cold embrace,
emotions faded, as did pain
and the taste of lunch.
Categories:
glose, angst, body, depression, emotions,
Form: Ghazal
“Consider the kind of body that enters blueness,
made out of dead-end myth and mischievous
whispers of an old, borderless
existence where the body’s meaning is both more and less.”
- Eavan Boland, ‘How It Was Once In Our Country’
Liminal, caught in the suction
of waves falling back to the sea.
Hybrid, fluid between worlds which
split genderless identity;
consider the kind of body that enters blueness.
Luring lost sailors onto rocks,
rulers of river, rain and sea.
Prototype virgins, sexless souls,
paradoxical history.
Made out of dead-end myth and mischievous
narratives that flow with the tide;
shape-shifting siren, lost and found
with knife-slashed legs and open mouth
a bleeding hole whose only sound
whispers of an old, borderless
story echoed through centuries.
Transient tides hide paradox,
detached pain and volatile self
which rise and crash like waves on rocks.
Existence where the body’s meaning is both more and less.
Categories:
glose, absence, body, depression, identity,
Form: Ghazal