Skinny Jeans

The checker asked my mother
Another one on the way already?
She cried the whole way home
and for a few days after that.
She started The Soup Diet.
Every meal: canned tomato, cabbage,
carrot, onion, water, sorry.

A magazine filled with women
with broken looking-limbs said to look at my
body as a whole, instead of in parts,
a drug-dealer holding a stigma seminar
on a page I tore out and taped to
my mirror and ignored forever.

She went barely-not-running
every day, all the way to Skinny.
I held a contest and decided if
I had to eat my own body,
I would start with my thighs –
I imagine they would be self-basting,
dimples melting and
barely-not-running all directions.

She bought a pair of jeans
that were Too Big for her and
asked me if I wanted them?
I did not if I recall.
I started the Potato Diet.
Morning: half a microwaved potato,
and the other half
only if you Absolutely have to.

After passing out, I remembered
a torn out page from the book on
my head saying bring a napkin
or two in your purse
so you can spit out your poison
without being rude.

 

A Pacific Northwest native, Brianna Radke now lives in the Greater Los Angeles area where she is a Director of Marketing by day and a writer and poet by night. Most recently, her work has appeared in Chaleur Magazine, Exposition Review, and (forthcoming) Haunted Waters Press.

 

 

 

“Like”, “Share”, and comment on this poem to nominate it for the Annual Swimming with Elephants Publications 2019 Anthology.

Click here check out Parade: Swimming with Elephants Publications Anthology 2018 available for only $10.95.