There are two brownie sundaes on the table— one is in front of me, one is in front of my sister, we're at dinner with our mom who we don't know is on cocaine, who's wearing sunglasses & having a hard time tasting her food, & my sister says she doesn't want her brownie sundae so I decide, once I've finished mine, that I will eat hers as well, it's 1997-or-8, I'm eating my sister's brownie sundae & our mom tells me I'm not to continue eating my sister's brownie sundae, but I want to continue (though unaware that I want to continue in service of what wants to discontinue me), so I say I'm going to, & our mom says no you're not & I say yes I am & she says no & I say oh gosh are you going to start being a mom all the sudden (no I don't), & then she brings up my weight which is tied to nothing, what am I, twelve, thirteen, & my sister hasn't yet entered treatment, & mom hasn't yet had the gastric bypass, & I've not yet tried to squash the illogic of craving with the taller illogic of god so our mom pours black pepper all over the sundae is how the ordeal ends & I'm furious but then she is laughing & my sister is laughing so I guess, ha ha, I too am laughing—not that it's funny, but that she thinks I can be stopped
My eating disorder was (is) rooted in rebellion. I was both rebellious and anxious as an adolescent—far too anxious to risk getting into real trouble via drugs, alcohol, vandalism, etc. My rebellion found a perfect vehicle in food. At once innocuous and erotic, it allowed me access to a kind of introverted wildness. Here were materials I could, without repercussion, get high on (food) and deface (my own body).
"John Greening’s latest collection, The Silence, begins with this week’s poem, "Sibelius," and concludes with the title sequence, a long, mesmeric fusion of biographical narrative and meditation, structured in formal quatrains."
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"I have read a wide shelf’s worth of books of translation theory, but when I actually sit down to translate, especially poetry, all of that beautifully formulated theory goes out the window, and I am faced with the poet’s mind, and my mind, and how I am going to get them to work together."
