Three poems by CHLOE HONUM
To the Anorexic
Sleepy child, what are you sewing? Where do you imagine you will wear it?
Daylight falls like yards of satin in your lap. When Mother wraps her arms
around you, your shoulders don’t begin where she expects—do you enjoy
this, that it takes a moment to find you? It is winter and the fields are
numb. Then it’s spring and poppies flaunt their blood-soaked composure.
For months, you feel the tug of hunger, like a balloon tied to your wrist.
The sky asks nothing. Let your hand float up, and answer.
3 The Paris-American
Sleepy child, what are you sewing? Where do you imagine you will wear it?
Daylight falls like yards of satin in your lap. When Mother wraps her arms
around you, your shoulders don’t begin where she expects—do you enjoy
this, that it takes a moment to find you? It is winter and the fields are
numb. Then it’s spring and poppies flaunt their blood-soaked composure.
For months, you feel the tug of hunger, like a balloon tied to your wrist.
The sky asks nothing. Let your hand float up, and answer.
3 The Paris-American
Ballerina at Dawn
By then I'd learned
to triple pirouette,
which felt like disappearing.
At dawn, mist widened
the space between the trees.
I walked toward the studio,
past the creek and the pale-
veined stones. Light
measured the icicles.
And for a moment,
passing beneath those
swords of slow rain,
I heard the birds lift
their hunger-song
from early to midwinter.
4 The Paris-American
By then I'd learned
to triple pirouette,
which felt like disappearing.
At dawn, mist widened
the space between the trees.
I walked toward the studio,
past the creek and the pale-
veined stones. Light
measured the icicles.
And for a moment,
passing beneath those
swords of slow rain,
I heard the birds lift
their hunger-song
from early to midwinter.
4 The Paris-American
May in Massachusetts
A pair of boots, hanging by their laces from a power line, swings in the cold
breeze. Beneath them: a blue pebble, a ring of ice, figurines of snow–
things left on winter’s shelves. Today, I have boxes to pack; dust, dirt, and
dead flies, like black asterisks, to sweep from the corners of the apartment;
a set of keys to leave behind. Spring, where is your heart? The year is five
months old and already its skin is torn. Spill your tonics. Raise your needle.
Hummingbirds wait to fly backwards through its eye.
5 The Paris-American
A pair of boots, hanging by their laces from a power line, swings in the cold
breeze. Beneath them: a blue pebble, a ring of ice, figurines of snow–
things left on winter’s shelves. Today, I have boxes to pack; dust, dirt, and
dead flies, like black asterisks, to sweep from the corners of the apartment;
a set of keys to leave behind. Spring, where is your heart? The year is five
months old and already its skin is torn. Spill your tonics. Raise your needle.
Hummingbirds wait to fly backwards through its eye.
5 The Paris-American

Chloe Honum’s poems have appeared in The Paris Review, Poetry, The Southern Review, Orion, Memorious, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of a Ruth Lilly Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation, an Isabella Gardner Residency Fellowship from the MacDowell Colony, and a Tennessee Williams scholarship from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference. She is currently the Writer in Residence at the Jack Kerouac House in Orlando, Florida. Find her online at www.chloehonum.com.