The Hunger Artist
I.
She putties potatoes/eggs/whatever
around her plate, constructing a trompe l’oeil
of savor, tinting flavor
with a spectrum of petite packages – fake sugars (pastels),
cheap mustard (sallow yellow), ketchup (cadmium)–a palette
that abstracts a meal from anything, or
nothing, frames nibble.
So, she molds herself, flattening
with fingers a fluted
throat, bas-relief of belly, stilled life portrait
that refuses to be titled help me.
II.
She has not read Kafka, but re-enacts
the self-expression of
repression, metier of life/death, her wont: I won’t/I won’t/I won’t.
Or too like the earlier Brunelleschi, working out
perspective by numbers, the intersection of
calories, weight,
narrowing to
a single
vanishing point.
Lettuce pray.
III.
You can self-sculpt flesh
but carved bone is weakened (even when
buttressed by concrete will.) A
mighty fortress is
my will, hums
the hunger artist from
the ramparts
of rib cathedral.
Help me, murmurs the animal
base of brain, only, since it holds no
language center, the words transubstantiate to
I won’t.
IV.
The patina depicts
a picky picky
no no no, while within the
figurine – so much easier to manage a life
that can be pocketed–hallowed emptiness
aches to please.
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The above is my draft offering for dVerse Poets Pub Open Link Night and also for Imperfect Prose. I urge all interested in reading and writing to check out these sites.
Crib notes – Franz Kafka wrote a great story called “The Hunger Artist” about an artist who specialized in fasting; Brunelleschi was the Renaissance architect/sculptor/mathematician who was one of the principal developers of linear perspective.
ManicDDaily 
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