When the starvation-hair appears

all over my body, you call it fascinating,

which is not the same as beautiful.

I never decide what to wish for first,

food or you. Or rather, eating food again

or never again eating you. Your favorite part

of me, my cupped hipbone, empty

as a half mango scooped clean of its flesh.

Your least favorite part, my hunger.

I learn to fill myself with other things:

the julienned light in the bedroom, mouthfuls

of Debussy from the old piano, the endless suck

of the toilet, which, bravely, never stops running.

Even vowels become impossible luxuries,

so round they seem indulgent against my tongue.

I consider violence after hearing that on death row

you get one last perfect meal. I imagine the photo

in the newspaper story, where I look so

beautiful.

I think of the woman in the Bible

who asks for John’s head on a platter.

Maybe she was only hungry.

Maybe she wanted to be satisfied.

Like everything delicious, I was warned against it.

Those mornings, I’d slowly descend the stairs

in my plaid Catholic school uniform skirt, find my parents

eating behind newspapers, coned in separate silences.

The only music was the throat-clearing rasp of toast

being scraped with too-little butter, three passes

of the blade, kkrrrrr, kkrrrr, kkrrr, battle hymn of the eighties.

When I pulled the butter close, my mother’s eyes

would twitch to my knife, measuring my measuring--

the goal, she’d shared from Weight Watchers,

a pat so thin the light shines through. If I disobeyed,

indulged, slathered my toast to glistening lace,

I’d earn her favorite admonition, predictable as Sunday’s

dry communion wafer: “A moment on the lips . . .”

I couldn’t stop my head from chiming, forever on the hips.

Hips? They were my other dangerous excess.

I was growing them in secret beneath my skirt,

and when I walked the dog after breakfast

and a truck whooshed past from behind, the trucker’s eyes

sizzling mine in his rear view, I knew my secret

wouldn’t stay a secret long. They were paired, up top,

by a swelling, flesh rising like cream to fill, then overfill

the frothy training bra. Everything softening on the shelf,

milk-made. Meanwhile, at breakfast, sitting on my secret,

I’d concede, scrape kkrrrrr, kkrrrr, kkrrr, lay down

my weapon, dry toast sticking in my craw. I’d think

of the girl from school, seventeen to my fourteen,

who crawled out the window of first-period bio

to meet her boyfriend from the Navy base. She’d collar

his peacoat, draw his mouth to her white neck,

or so I kept imagining. Slut, the girls whispered, watching

her struggling back through the window, throat

pinked from cold and his jaw’s dark stubble,

kkrrrrr, kkrrrr, kkrrr. Only fourth period,

and already I was hungry for lunch, or something.

Thank you, Republican parents, thank you,

Catholic education, thank you, Reganomics—

words I never knew I’d write. But I hereby acknowledge

repression’s inadvertent gifts. Folks who came of age

in liberal families, permissive cities, the free-love sixties,

how far they must go to transgress—

Vegas, latex, sex tapes, a sugaring of the nostrils?

Yet how close at hand rebellion is for me.

Merely making married love with my married husband,

I’m a filthy whore. Merely sitting down to breakfast

and raising the butter knife, I’m living on the edge.

—2019

Tonight, as you undress, I watch your wondrous

flesh that’s swelled again, the way a river swells

when the ice relents. Sweet relief

just to regard the sheaves of your hips,

your boundless breasts and marshy belly.

I adore the acreage

of your thighs and praise the promising

planets of your ass.

O, you were lean that terrifying year

you were unraveling, as though you were returning

to the slender scrap of a girl I fell in love with.

But your skin was vacant, a ripped sack,

sugar spilling out and your bones insistent.

O praise the loyalty of the body

that labors to rebuild its palatial realm.

Bless butter. Bless brie.

Sanctify schmaltz. And cream and cashews.

Stoke the furnace

of the stomach and load the vessels. Darling,

drench yourself in opulent oil,

the lamp of your body glowing. May you always

flourish enormous and sumptuous,

be marbled with fat, a great vault that

I can enter, the cathedral where I pray.

i know the grandmother one had hands

but they were always in bowls

folding, pinching, rolling the dough

making the bread

i know the grandmother one had hands

but they were always under water

sifting rice

bluing clothes

starching lives

i know the grandmother one had hands

but they were always in the earth

planting seeds

removing weeds

growing knives

burying sons

i know the grandmother one had hands

but they were always under

the cloth

pushing it along

helping it birth into

skirt

dress

curtains to lock out

night

i know the grandmother one had hands

but they were always inside

the hair

parting

plaiting

twisting it into rainbows

i know the grandmother one had hands

but they were always inside

pockets

holding the knots

counting the twisted veins

holding onto herself

let her hands disappear

into sky

i know the grandmother one had hands

but they were always inside the clouds

poking holes for

the rain to fall.

some days        you seem
so disappointed, love   but you knew 

what it was.
i am your dread wife. 

you will not throw me out 
of eden            i walk myself to the door. 

o! 
there is no snake          i plant the tree. 

i pluck the apple       i bite.
the pomegranate          the passion fruit

whatever the fuck. 
i am feast unto myself.  

in this wilderness         the feral things name me. 

& i was raised to one day wash 
my husband’s feet at night.

of course i molted        made myself a woman 
who unmakes home. 

refused to be whittled to a fine point              
but you like me piercing.

beloved                        i will not 
only writhe when coming. 

my vow: break through this shell         fully impossible.
your vow: lap every slick of the yolk.