SAINT JULIAN PRESS

Cynthia Atkins ~ Poet

Anorexia Nervosa

 
Every night, my sister dines on air 
and alabaster, pushing potatoes up against 
an embankment of peas, into winter’s 
            spare room of loneliness.  Under the table, 
the pampered dog takes inventory.  Our mother, 
fashioned out of a magazine, in pedal-pushers 
and a midriff, says, Fatten up, girls, while you can, 
a husband wants a pretty girl with a thin waistline.
A froth with bite, her sweet talk atop 
a blunt knife blade.  Night by night, my sister’s 
eyes sink flat as the blown-out tire 
on the highway—Where I watched 
a man jack up the axle and then 
feel her up at the steering wheel.  
Everything has a price in this life, our mother said. 
My sister subtly jabs a cube of beef until 
it bleeds a river of grief and lands face down 
to where the dog knows his cue.  
In the rain, that hellish night
the man (or was it God) that whispered 
in my ear, Shut the fuck up, or else.
From the legs of the dinner table,
or the back of a car, I watched it all. 
The way my sister pulled her thinning
hair back to yank her insides out 
over the toilet.  Thin as a barbed wire fence, 
her arms and legs fold into a self,
a prison of skin she starves herself 
to jump from.  The dog waits, innocent 
as an unlit cigarette.  Our mother now
old as soap, says she doesn’t remember a thing.
My own ribcage and heart glow inside my sister’s
prom dress, bodiless on a flower-covered bed--
bones settling in her new home address.

 
POET’S PAGE
 
PRESS RELEASE
 
POEMS
 
WHEN THE INTERNET IS THE LONELIEST PLACE ON THE PLANET
GOD IS A LIBRARY

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