[Maryann Corbett]

Anorexic

--For Eavan Boland

From the outside, I see no heretic,
no witch, no bitch now burning at the stake.
I see a fertile field stricken by drought.

My fingers scamper down the crevices
of her neck, spider-like, across the gullies
between the muscles, formed as fat receded
in some sick parody of glaciation,
leaving behind the lumpy soil of lymph
nodes, salivary gland, windpipe and thyroid
traversed by pipes for irrigation--veins
and arteries--yet still this land is barren
but for lanugo, powerless to stop
erosion by the wind, the breath, the ruach.

I palm the stethoscope's unfeeling head.
My fingers trace the furrows of her spine,
parting the fine lanugo hairs that bristle
like wind-blown grass effacing the once deep
ruts of a packed dirt trail across Nebraska.
Her ribs are furrows, breasts prairie dog mounds.

I auscultate, the stethoscope a snake,
slithering, pausing, listening below.
Without the muffling fat, everything's loud:
the trochaic machinations of the heart,
the slow iambic rhythms of the lungs,
the free verse borborygmi of the bowels.

The pager breaks my trance. I leave to write
a note of the encounter, order labs
and artificial nourishment by vein.
I sigh, reminded of the psalmist's words:
Their soul abhoreth all manner of food:
and they draw near unto the gates of death.

I hurry to keep my dinner reservation
but pause outside her door to glimpse the girl,
a fallow field half naked on the bed.
Fluorescent lights, unmoving in their coffins
in the ceiling, whisper light across the dust
bowl of her belly, casting angular
and ominous shadows of trochanters
and tubercles from the bones she'll leave behind.

[Janice D. Soderling]

Who could forget a poem with the word borborygmi . Good choice to deck the halls.

[Jennifer Reeser]

What ambition, and practical, diffuse countering to the idealistic, compacted intensity of Boland's poem.

I like the set-up with its antithesis, refuting the image of proud, romantic anti-hero/ine going up in a blaze of martyred glory, per Boland. "Sick parody of glaciation" -- very resonant.

Some might call the technical terminology such as "lanugo" pedantic for poetry, but I rather like it, in place of the anglified translation, mostly for the sheer sound and succinctness, but somewhat for its alienness, emphasizing the absurdity of this condition. And since the meaning is explained shortly following...

All the "au"s and "ow"s of S4 are super. The effect of that stanza's end (trochaic machinations, slow iambic rhythms, borborygmi) render the patient a cartoon to me -- perhaps appropriately so.

Your quoting of Psalm 107 is sharp -- subtle in what it doesn't include, regarding hunger, and the good.

A troubling close.

[W.F. Lantry]

Very nice. I'd never seen this one, but the exactitude of the physical details makes it easy to guess the author. The use of 'lanugo' cinches the identity...

I love these lines:

the trochaic machinations of the heart,
the slow iambic rhythms of the lungs,

Difficult subject, difficult form, all very well done!

Thanks,

Bill

[Petra Norr]

A part of me is impressed by the barrage of words, the never-ending descriptions, the meticulous details, etc.; after all, it's obvious that a lot of thought and care went into the writing. But as soon as I came to the last stanza, I couldn't help thinking how much more effective and striking it would have been if the poem consisted only of that stanza, with some slight adjustments to make it clear that it's a doctor looking at the girl. So, a part of me wishes for a much shorter poem.

[Roger Slater]

Wonderful work indeed. I'm filled with admiration, and believe I know for whom.

(This is neither here nor there, but I have a children's poem in which I use the word borborygmus in a somewhat lighter context).

[Martin Elster]

I know who wrote this. I've seen this poem before on a website. I thought it was well-wrought and still do.

[Rick Mullin]

I understand what Petra is saying. In essence, I see two fine poems here--the last stanza as something very nearly stand-alone, and the rest following through, never breaking from its stark, clinical investigation, but for the words of the psalmist. The first part may have to be tie it off a little differently.

I have no idea who wrote this one.~,:^)

Rick

[Julie Steiner]

I like the final stanza. The narrator who, throughout this difficult and obligatory "encounter", has tried to remain as "unfeeling" as the stethoscope...turns back of his own volition to take another look at the patient. And for the first time in this poem, she is not just a metaphorical landscape, but also a "girl".

And as she finally becomes a person for him in that stanza, I remember the opening lines, which negated other words sometimes used to depersonalize girls--"witch" and "bitch". On returning to those lines, I see that the concept of heresy has a specific new meaning in light of the rest of the poem: "witch" and "heretic" may refer to the fact that this patient has chosen to defy what science and medicine say regarding food, while "bitch" may refer to her rejection of the male narrator's advice. Yes, the narrator only mentions those words to discard them, but perhaps they come to his mind in the first place because of his frustration in this no-win situation. (Okay, now that I've read the Boland poem, I see why "witch" and "bitch" come to mind, but I still like my interpretation, even if it's wrong!)

I'm fairly sure the opening wouldn't have resonated with me in quite the same way on subsequent readings, had the final stanza been missing.