Core Collection

By Sarah Simon

"Food.
Exercise.
Starvation.
A fascination with bones,
body feeling.
Anxiety.
Depression.
Obsession.
Avoiding friends,
family,
myself.
A yearning for emptiness,
a fear of being full.
Being full of emptiness.

It wasn’t until much later – about four years after I started to recover from my eating disorder – that I realized how it had been infiltrating my poetry all along. After all, in my writing, I could be honest to my experiences, whether or not they made sense.

There’s this quote about poetry, that it “heals the wounds infected by reason.” but this collection is me recognizing, relinquishing, and releasing the wounds that developed without reason, or for reasons that have no reason. Why would anyone starve themselves, anyway? Why would anyone find satisfaction in getting skinny enough just to see a clavicle jut out of a shoulder? Why would anyone compromise a social life just to maintain the daily calorie count?

While poetry may be a rest from logic and a way to reason the illogical, it is important to acknowledge what it is that you are experiencing. Looking at your poetry, what it is that your mind does, subconsciously – can help you realize who you are, what you want, what madness you are perpetuating in and onto yourself."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Adelaide Books Publishers
• Release date: Aug 20, 2019
• ISBN: 9781951214319

Sarah Simon

Sarah Simon is a poet, photographer, yogi, Bob Dylan admirer, average ukulele player, teacher, and student of psychology and Spanish. Also, I should mention – she’s a New Yorker, and therefore an avid walker; you won’t find her in the suburbs, and it is a danger to humanity that she even has a driver’s license. A recent graduate of the State University of New York at Geneseo (SUNY Geneseo), she earned a B.A. in psychology, and then left to teach English in Ecuador. As of March 2019, she will again leave to teach English as a Fulbright grantee in Uruguay. Hasta luego, ella dice, besitos.

Book preview

note from the author

it wasn’t until the sister of a friend asked to interview me about my eating disorder. she was working on a project for grad school, tampering with the idea that eating disorders should be understood as existing along a spectrum, much like schizophrenia and autism currently are. now, this is not to say that these disorders are even remotely related – just that they share a nature. i do not doubt that every disorder in the DSM will eventually be looked at by the medical community in this way.

to finish the thought, it wasn’t until then that i recognized common threads in much of my poetry, all knotting back to my eating disorder: food, exercise, a fascination with bones, body feeling, anxiety, depression, emptiness, a fear of being full. maybe you can point out some others for me, further helping me reach the subconscious of the subconscious that is supposed to be poetry.

p.s.

if you want to know why i seem to like triangles so much, ask me

I AM NOT QUITE A LATTE,

but rather a cappuccino

who thinks she just wants a plain ol'

Joe, no sugar –

no milk –

no foam –

but she is not just a plain ol' Jane;

it is the perfection of shape

that she seeks, a fantastic form.

a body that she thinks

milk cannot support,

as in her bones, she becomes

weak;

yes, for lack of calcium,

but yet too many

bananas, her safe food, plenty of

potassium;

until when, at the first sip of an accidentally-ordered

– not-asked-for –

cappuccino,

sitting outside in the

sunshine

with Diego,

enamorado –

she sips it anyway,

for being three whole dollars.

and then, after all the hours spent sipping

muddy waters,

she decided to cut the bitterness

with fat

THE FIRST LINE I TOOK FROM NINA SIMONE

what I could do if I had no fear!

how would I do it?

extract the amygdala there are two and they

are almonds but especially on the right

side rip it out with

the fear of anaphylaxis from the one allergic to tree

nuts

fear

ancestors who were fearful

lived because they skirted situations and

said that does not seem safe! while

hiding in caves

but we are safe we are safe in piles of

laundry! still with this fear

having nothing to put it into nothing

to promise a ripping out of

it comes to malaise:

I

become

the

cave.

think about this

strange position!

I am not the one

finding shelter; I am not

the predator; I am the cave!

just swallowing myself

and people may visit,