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Breakthrough Session: Bulimic to Her Therapist

Doc, it's not about thin.
Though that's what everyone gushes: Girl,
you don't have nothin to worry about,
as they eye my thighs,
eschew the butter crust and finger
a sensible grape.
You know I don't come clean with this stuff much, doc,
but I been thinking...
This could be my claim to fame,
so to speak!
You ever heard of a gastro-renegade?
Picture it:
Bonnie & Clyde squeal into dusty border towns
sitting high in a low rider caviar black Corvette
(It's a new century, doc),
stopping once on highway 10 outside Alvarado
to slug mescal and make love like two wolves
tearing at the dark.
Man, that worm didn't stand a chance.
They shock the locals with lusty gropes
and the lambada.
Bonnie is the real firecracker
with a taste for the strap, a flair for flash,
and a bullet ride to rage-
WHAT did you say?
The bar is closed?!
and wham! Campfire roasted rabbit and bits of agave
everywhere!
Clyde, of course, swoons over his furiously lanky lady,
aches to rub his licorice colored stubble over her stomach, smooth
as a Smith & Wesson.
Bonnie plants a sour kiss on Clyde's honored lips and they ride off
into a cinnamon desert, smothered in a sunset
orange as Mrs. Daley's Thanksgiving pumpkin pie.

Yeah, that's as good as me, doc,
a bonafide Gen-X quick draw.
I can unload a muffin or purge Mom's chops
with the flick of an acrylic-tipped index,
outside the subtle narrowing of Maybelline's envious glance,
return to the clink of Wedgwood,
and dive into the brandy sauce.
You think I'm a victim, doc?
that maybe I been dished up a short serving?
left with leftovers, so to speak?
I just know
when I'm hunkered down over Lysol swabbed porcelain and dingy tile
in a dinner-hour bathroom ablaze on Colley Avenue,
exhuming the lunch hummis,
recoiling from caloric OD, I smell
the burn of tires and hear the horn of that black Corvette.
It brakes hard and spits gravel. Clyde slides
the tinted window down like a silk slip
and whispers smoky as a single-malt,
She'll be scoping hits all night tonight.
Bonnie winks from behind the wheel,
you-go-sister approval for eating
my cake and hating it too,
for blasting shotgun shells into the luncheonette
of my heart, for winning the shootout
in every woman's skirmish
with cellulite.


Cesca Janece Waterfield

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