SONG: WITHOUT APPETITE

a four-part poem on Anorexia

1.

Prelude: St. Margaret of Hungary

Hundreds of years ago

waiting in the kitchen

in torchlight the daughter

of the house

of the king himself.

But now she has made herself

the servant, the nourishing,

always bringing the meal always

ready to be waiting. Her father

arranging the wedding.

Each step on the stair

could be someone coming closer.

She always making herself

as narrow as hope and as beautiful

as the urge to art and has whittled

herself to only a famished heart.

Each point of bone

protruding through the skin

is a syllable in his holy name.

Her father there waiting for the rescuer

to come, unless she has first

been abducted into holiness

So all through history

young girls have lost

their appetite,

swallowed mystery,

and vanished into night.

2.

her last words

I will call you one day

And when you pick up the phone

I will only say:

I have become an idea

finally! And click.

And you will come to my door

And open it up and look inside

And say: It is true!

She has become finally

blue!

3.

 A letter to her Brother.

I saw her

standing

like an unfinished house.

There was a bird loose

in her ribs.

The wood was still green.

Along a street

An unexpected parade

Full of children

Who exploded their voices

through brass

and called it music.

I am sorry to have to be

the one to tell you this,

but some of that music

went through her frame.

It shook the wooden beams

and startled the bird.

4.

Dialogue

When will the sleeping margarets wake

and walk among us once again?

                  When we have made a gentle place

                  where women walk with loving men.

But the world I see is green with joy

and if you try, you can be free.

                  I know there are no margarets there

                  I cannot see what you can see.

But this is the garden my father grew

I’ve done my best to make it flower.

If no margaret lives beyond an hour,

                  then I guess this place will not do.

Well, what can we do to make it new

to make the sleeping margarets wake?

We’ll have to tear it up again

for every single margaret’s sake.

 AFTERWORD

A while ago I was teaching at UCSC and a student came late to the class. It was a required class. She must have this class in her first year. Her name was Sonya. She came with her parents and her brother. It was unusual to see such a crowd. They met with me after class. Sonya was almost two weeks behind. She needed my permission to start the class so late.

            Sonya’s parents and brother were very earnest—almost desperate. I told the parents I would listen to their story, but I would not discuss their daughter’s work or her decisions with them. They said she had been in the hospital and just got out. It was at Stanford. It was special program addressing anorexia.

It was the late 1980’s. Eating disorders were getting attention. This disease seemed especially complex and political.  It should be noted that at the time I lost 60lbs because of physical problem. At the time did not know why. I could not swallow and was stuck. For years eating in public became anathema for me. When I ate I vomited. So I felt some oblique connection with this catastrophe. My family intervened much later and I got surgery at UCSF. But I felt what it was like to starve for about 12 years. 

Sonya at this time was just out of what they thought was successful treatment in a new therapeutic environment. A few weeks later I saw her running and saw her losing weight. Her face was drawn. She left school before the quarter ended. Her parents called me with the sad news that she died suddenly not long after. I wrote these poems in one sitting in a forest near by.