I.

Your arm stuck through the library window

bright over noon-sharpened lawn

and Leo B. — benign, rugby-reddened

flip-flops-in-February-sleet Leo —

catching sight, saying “Your arm’s so small!”

meaning, maybe, short, but possibly, also,

thin.                                  Certainly

he wouldn’t have said “small”

if he’d thought the arm not thin — O

instant irradiation, tack holiness:

I am small. I am perceived as small.

This is a war of attrition. Your body

a foursome of towers

you’re desperate to hack into,

praying that, once broken, it might

fit a smaller mould.

II.

In those months when I laid siege to hunger

and hunger fucked my womb,

my bones, booby-trapped my mind

so every thought was of a horde, wishing me lifted

clean and heather-light, wishing me ill,

so waking was a mirrored hall what will you

eat how much will you weigh when will you

eat who will notice how will you get through

this day                         that comment (mild,

offhand) sparked a fervid sense of worth,

mingled with the high-notes

distilled from hours of fasting — delivered

me to the lightness of one

whose body has been sanctified

by the absent-minded noticing

of friendly, thickset men.

III.

And when it came from women it was great too

though often tinged with something yellow:

a knowing concern, envy with its head smashed in:

Yeah but you’re tiny — hand flicked, head

thrown back. Really it came sullied

by inklings of intimate cost — they must’ve seen

my eyelids, puffed up like two dates;

the filigree of capillaries

exploded along my cheekbone

from all that head-down retching;

must’ve felt       that half-year

when my ovaries refused to drop their seeds,

my innards a battlefield, a hollowed

squirming gum — must’ve heard

all that electricity

IV.

Instructions to observe progress

towards a lighter, purer body: STAND

IN THE MIRROR several times a day,

every day, for hundreds of days,

your ankles PRESSED so tightly a tiny purplish rose

will summit each bone’s peak; TILT your hips

out; PUSH knees back till the angle aches obtuse.

I am friendly with the toilet seat — grateful, even,

for its foetid whine: I kneel and heave, kneel and heave,

wishing muscle and fat scooped from my thighs, legs soaring

from each other like saplings bent or an archer’s bow.

And always the chorus bitter-fanged,

replacing the sky the air the light and all, all space what

      will you eat how much

      will you weigh when

will you eat who will notice

how many calories

by the end of this day